^9^'. 



Feodor "Vladimir I^arrovitch 



AN APPRECIATION OF HIS LIFE ts" WORKS 




Class. 
Book.. 



Co^ightN^ 

COHfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




A portrait oj Larrovitch^ a pressed flower Jrom his grave at Yalta 
and a page of the Ms. of ''''Crasny Baba" framed and on the 
walls of the Authors Club 



Feodor %)ladimir I^rrovitch 

AN APPRECIATION OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS 

EDITED BY 

WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN AND 

RICHARDSON WRIGHT 



^ 



The <iAuthors Qlub 

NEW YORK 
I918 



Copyright, igi8, by The Authors Club 

0^ 



JIJN -8 1918 
©aA499357 

-wo I 



[^ DEDICATED 

- TO THE QUICKLY KINDLED AND LASTING SYMPATHY 

BETWEEN THE GREAT PEOPLES OF 



America and Ti^ssia 



Contents 

Preface 

I^rrovitch 

CLINTON SCOLLARD, A. B. 

A Prolegomenon to J^arrovitch 

FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, A. B,,PH. D.,LL.D. 

The Personal Side oi J^rrovitch 

WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN 

J^arrovitcK s Place in Literature 

M'CREADY SYKES, A. B. 

Some Translations from J^rrovitch 

RICHARDSON WRIGHT 

Three Incidental Poems by J^arrovitch 

GEORGE S. HELLMAN, A. B. 

Five I^arrovitch Letters 

THOMAS WALSH, PH. D., LITT. D. 

The True and the False About J^arrovitch 

RICHARDSON WRIGHT 

Talks with J^arrovitch 

TITUS MUNSON COAN, A. M., M. D. 



(foments 
Toward a J^rrovitch Foundation 

JAMES HOWARD BRIDGE 

Bibliography of J^arrovitch 

ARTHUR COLTON, A. B., PH. D. 

Bibliographical Notes 

ARTHUR COLTON, A. B., PH. D. 

References 

GUST AVE SIMONSON, A. M., M. D. 






Illustrations 

Authors Club I^arrovitch Memento 

The Mother and Father of J^arrovitch 

Ms. from "Crasny Baba"^ 

J^arrovitch as a Young Man 

Invitation to J^arrovitch Centenary Celebration 

Program oi J^rrovitch Centenary Celebration 

Room in which I^arrovitch Died • 

The Tomb of J^arrovitch at Yalta 

Relics oi J^arrovitch 



'.^ 



^'. 



"Preface 



1 HE purpose of assembling between covers these 
commentaries on the life and work of Feodor Vladimir 
Larrovitch was to preserve in permanent form the first 
American tribute to that finely discerning interpreter of 
Russian life and ideals. 

Between America and Russia there has been a great gulf 
fixed for many years. Neither America nor Russia has 
striven very hard — despite several historic manifestations 
of interest — to foster an abiding friendship. Both nations 
have suffered from geographic separation. Both have felt 
acutely the intervention of pernicious influences. There 
has really been only a meager showing of that sympathy and 
sentiment which, in other instances, has bred a camara- 
derie vital, advantageous and enduring. 

What was true of our diplomatic relations has also been 
true of our mutual literary interests. American writers 
are read in Russia and Russian writers in America, but 
in neither case are they totally typical of either people. 
Current public demand has much to do with this. Jack 
London, for example, is a favorite with the Russian read- 
ing public, and in America Artsibasheff has enjoyed a cer- 
tain measure of popularity. Yet who would say either en- 
tirely represented his respective country? 

Again, the popularity of a foreign author may be due to 
the fact that he is ''discovered'' by some well-known critic, 
and on the recommendation of that critic translations of his 
works are devoured by an unreflecting public. 

These methods of transplanting a foreign author to a 
strange soil are, indeed, unfair both to author and reader. 
They are even more unfair to the great mass of the ''undis- 
covered" who enjoy popularity at home but are without 
honor abroad. In creating amity between peoples it is ne- 
cessary to preserve more than a balance of trade; we must 
establish and maintain a balance of the arts. The path to 
peace is a road along which all manner of folk can walk 

[II] 



Feodor %)ladimir jTarrovitch 

and exchange ideas of art^ letters and music. These are the 
abiding expressions of a people. 

Our separation from Russia has been due mainly to a 
blind prejudice which even the overthrow of Tsardom can- 
not entirely dispel. True^ we attend the Russian ballet^ 
and have learned that the bear which walked like a man 
was actually a man who danced like a satyr. In the chaotic 
tones of Tschaikowsky^ Scherabin and Rimsky -Korsakoff^ 
we have found widened casements that look on Heaven. In 
the pages of Turgeniev, Tolstoi^ Gorky, Dostoievsky , and 
Tchekoff, we read phases of the Russian soul that open to 
us magnificent vistas of understanding. But even these are 
not enough. Our art and letters have trodden different 
paths. If ever they can hope to converge in the broad road 
of understanding, it must be through a complete acquaint- 
ance. We cannot depend for our appreciation of Russian 
authors upon the chance recommendation of an enthusias- 
tic critic or the shrewd discrimination of a clever publisher 
who gives the people what he thinks they want. In short, 
America has still to discover literary Russia. Before we 
can know the great Russian people we must know some- 
thing, at least, of all the influences that have come to bear on 
them through the printed page. 

In the interests of establishing a literary balance, an 
amity of the pen between the great peoples of America and 
Russia, the Authors Club arranged for a celebration of the 
centenary of LarrovitcK s birth. This was held on the 
evening of April 26, 1917, in the Club Rooms. It was one 
of the largest gatherings of the year, an indication of the 
respect felt to be due the great Russian. The contributions 
which have been gathered together in this volume were read 
on that occasion. Lantern slides of places intimately as- 
sociated with Larrovitch were shown and there was ex- 

[12} 



Preface 

hibited a collection of Larrovitch relics loaned by M. Lenin 
of Moscow. A portrait of Larrovitch together with a page 
from the Ms. of ''Crasny Baba" and a pressed flower from 
the author s grave at Yalta, were presented by a member of 
the Club and have been given permanent place on our walls. 

WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN 
RICHARDSON WRIGHT 

For the Authors Club. 



[13} 



!^ 



J^rrd))itch 

-ogCLINTON SCOLLARD 



yes, even I have been guilty of verse. 

But who has not? Verse is the natural mode of ex- 
pression for exalted moments. Its rhythm is an echo 
of the rhythm of higher things. 

From a letter to S. G. Bonstin 



W HAT I shall say of Larrovitch shall be 

As though one spoke of twilight in the spring, 
Of vernal beauty come to blossoming 

Too soon, to fade and be but memory — 

The memory of a something to which we 

In our exalted moments fain would cling. 
Frail and ephemeral as the white moth's wing, 

Or as the prismy spindrift of the sea. 

Let us forget the chill Siberian snows. 

The stark Caucasian heights let us forget; 

These girdled and oppressed him, and his woes 
Wake in our hearts a passionate regret; 

So be there strewn above his long repose 
Sweet sprays of the Crimean violet! 

Clinton Scollard 



[17} 



<^- 



A PROLEGOMENON TO 

J^rrovitch 

-o^FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS 



Day this of me: That I never robbed the poor; 
that I never fled from foe; that I never failed to pro- 
tect the young and weak; that I have loved beauti- 
ful women and good things to eat and drink; that 
I have bowed me in the presence of great forest trees 
and stood uncovered beneath the stars. What does 
it matter that my name is writ in blood across three 
provinces? Men shall remember Ivan Soronko who 
did evil only that he might do good. 

From "Ivan Soronko." 



Fellow Members of the Authors Club : 

We are assembled to celebrate the one hundredth 
birthday of an author. We do not do it often. To the 
philosophers of the cosmic relations, as to the Eternal 
Mind, a thousand years may be as one day and one day 
as a thousand years, but authors in general cannot be so 
free with time, before or after death. Indeed, it is un- 
usual when, after a rounded century, an author is re- 
membered by authors; and it is extraordinary, as all will 
agree, when one is so remembered after having been for- 
gotten. 

Larrovitch, whom we honor, enjoys the distinction of 
having been brought to life. With Shakespeare and Na- 
poleon he is of the immortals whose existence has been 
questioned. For more than fifty years his name has been 
unknown, not only to the general reader, but even to the 
well-informed. In these rooms I have seen the eyelash 
lifted at mention of Larrovitch. 

Tonight, we present the evidences and resolve all 
doubts. On that table are the relics. There is a lock of 
his hair, and there are the lock and key of his prison. 
Behold with what embroideries that shirt is adorned. On 
yonder wall is the portrait, with its haunting suggestion 
of features somehow familiar. To the story that these 
silent witnesses bring we shall add testimony. Dr. Titus 
Munson Coan is here, and he knew Larrovitch and 
talked with him repeatedly, as he will tell you. 

Others will tell you of Larrovitch's qualities, of his 
struggles and achievements. They will offer their ap- 
preciations of his genius. May I make one small con- 
tribution of fact, upon which I am perhaps qualified to 
speak.? It was Larrovitch who discovered, or invented, 
the history of civilization. He foresaw the rise and fall 
of Kultur, and in discoursing of it he anticipated Her- 

[21] 



Feodor 'Vladimir JTarrovitch 

bert Spencer's famous definition of cosmic evolution. 
"Kultur," said Larrovitch, "is the integration of Ho- 
henzoUerns, accompanied by the differentiation and the 
segregation of nations, and the concomitant dissipation 
of Teutons." He warned of impending war between 
Potsdam and civiHzation,but also he foretold the success- 
ful and glorious end. 

Franklin Henry Giddings 



[22} 



THE PERSONAL SIDE OF 

J^rrovitch 

-05WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN 



1 DETEST him!" Katia seemed in earnest. "I 
detest the way he cuts his beard." "Oh dear, if 
you've never gotten beyond his beard," sighed 
Maria Sergevitch, "you have a lot more to learn 
about him." 

From "Propre et Ordonnee." 



In the little village of Tsubskaia in the Caucasus on 
the 26th of April, 18 17 (old style, April 13th) was born 
Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, whose work has shed un- 
dying glory on Russian literature. From his father's 
side he inherited Tatar blood, his grandfather being pure 
Tatar; on his mother's side he fell heir to Polish blood, 
his mother's people — the Olanskis — being among set- 
tlers who came from Poland to Kiev in the early years 
of the Eighteenth Century. 

His father's lineage seems to have been rather com- 
monplace; in fact it was due solely to the maternal side 
that Feodor inherited the intellectual power that flow- 
ered into genius. 

His father, Vladimir Serge Larrovitch, was a captain 
in the army, and while stationed at Kiev met and mar- 
ried the young and beautiful Sophia Feodorovna Olan- 
ski. On being ordered to take command of the local bar- 
racks at Tsubskaia, Larrovitch took his bride thither 
and it was there that Feodor Vladimir, the sole issue of 
the marriage, was born. 

Life in this little village in the hills would have been 
rather dull had it not been for the idyllic love of the 
young people who, as their son said later, in talking with 
Lanatiere in Paris in 1861, "would have made their 
Paradise even in a desert if they had had but each other." 
They were better off in worldly goods than most of their 
associates, for Sophia inherited, from her father, prop- 
erty which yielded an income that to the husband and 
wife seemed wealth. Their home, humble though its 
exterior, was within its walls tastefully furnished. 

The principal duties of Captain Larrovitch and his 
small command were to keep in subjection the brigands 
that infested the region of over a hundred versts around. 
They were not exterminated, as the government did not 
deem it wise to put too much pressure on the activities 

[25] 



Feodor IJladimir farrovitch 

of those so closely allied with the people,who rather sym- 
pathized with the brave reckless bands that reHeved the 
rich of their superfluous wealth. The stories of their 
raids, their secret haunts and their courage stirred and 
thrilled the imagination of Feodor as Homer's Iliad did 
the boys of ancient Greece. At night, after he had gone 
to bed, he listened to his father telling of his experiences 
with the brigands to his mother who did not know that 
the boy, supposed to be sleeping, really had his little 
curly head well away from the pillow, drinking in every 
word and trembling with excitement and the intensity 
of his interest. 

His mother, a cultured woman, well versed in French, 
German and Continental literature, undertook the early 
training of the boy, who at that time was so delicate 
that it was feared that he could never be a soldier. She 
confided her fears to the good, kind friend of the family, 
the local "pope" who conspired with her to convince the 
elder Larrovitch of the importance of giving Feodor 
more than a mere military education. 

In 1825 when the boy was eight years old, the revolt 
of the Decembrists broke out. Although this revolt did 
not reach the Caucasus, and Feodor was too young to 
realize it, it greatly stirred his mother. The revolt was 
the first one led by the aristocrats, mostly Polish; it 
gave color to the revolts that followed and set the cus- 
tom for revolts against the existing order being led by 
the intellectual and aristocratic people. Feodor, a ner- 
vous, sensitive, imaginative child, heard much of this 
and of the revolts that followed and though he under- 
stood little of the details, it somehow was a vital, in- 
tensifying influence in his life. 

As a child, he was loved by all and, in his play hours, 

[26} 







^1 




-31 






a- 



The Personal Side of £arrovitch 

was usually the center of a group of boys of the village, 
telling them stories of brigands, of soldiers and of patri- 
ots. The name by which the older folk usually greeted 
him, with a smile or a kindly pat on the head as he 
passed them on the road, was "Malinki Tsoube," which 
being translated means "the little well-beloved." 

His mother often told him (as he relates in a letter to 
Dostoievsky, dated May 19, 1864), of his Polish ances- 
tors. "Remember, Feodor, that your ancestor Ivan 
Olanski saved the life of his king, Sigismund I, in 15 19, 
as he led his army at the battle of Poldo. The fighting 
blood of more than ten generations of Poles flows in your 
veins. Remember ever that you must fight. Should ill- 
health keep you from fighting with your sword, fight 
with your mind, fight with your heart, fight with your 
soul, fight for freedom, for right, for truth, for justice. 
Let it never be said that an Olanski knew fear or hesita- 
tion in the face of wrong or oppression." "It was not 
until years afterward," added Larrovitch, "that I real- 
ized that I could fight for freedom with my pen." 

Two other influences in the boyhood of Feodor were 
virile formative elements in shaping his genius, in mak- 
ing the child the man, big with power, purpose and pos- 
sibility to do the work that will be undying in the his- 
tory of Russia. Some of his biographers have treated 
his father rather slightingly. They have failed to recog- 
nize his great sense of justice, so intense that it seemed 
an obsession, and for many versts around Tsubskaia, 
the people, who came to him as arbiter of their differ- 
ences instead of going to law, called him "Vladimir, the 
Supremely Just." In the light of this, the passion for 
justice that guided and inspired the son need cause no 
wonder as to whence it came. From the "little pope," 

[27] 



Feodor Vladimir farrovitch 

there was instilled into his heart and soul, a great spirit- 
uality; it persisted and it inspired, in the later years, 
the bitterness of his scourging of the bigotry, graft and 
superstition of the church. 

I have given in some detail the formative forces of his 
childhood that dominated his later life. To me they 
seem vital and fundamental if we are to understand Lar- 
rovitch aright. I pass merely sketchily and suggestively 
over the later years of his life because in their main lines 
they are doubtless familiar to you all, and should there 
be any here tonight to whom perchance they are not 
known, it would be taxing your courtesy unduly to de- 
lay you with facts so easily accessible in all the encyclo- 
pedias and histories. As to his books and the critical 
estimate of what Lanatiere calls "the miracles of Larro- 
vitch's pen," I shall say but a word. This will be told 
you tonight by more eloquent lips than mine, but — may 
I say it with humility? — with no more profound rever- 
ence than fills my own soul. I toss aside with contempt 
much of our contemporary literature, but I am thrilled, 
inspired, calmed and regenerated in the magic pages of 
the master genius of Russian literature — Larrovitch. 

At fifteen he entered the preparatory school, and in his 
nineteenth year he entered the University of Kiev to 
study medicine. In spite of the university teaching he 
managed to acquire sufficient knowledge of medicine, 
with a little history and literature on the side, to secure 
his degree. He never practiced medicine as a money- 
earning profession, but his knowledge made him later a 
ministering angel to the poor prisoners in Siberia and to 
the villagers near, whom he was permitted to help. 

After completing his university course, he chose to 
tutor in history and to take up the life of the intellectual 

[28] 



The T^ersonal Side of farrovitch 

colony of the University, and writing short essays and 
poems for the magazines and journals from his twenty- 
fifth to his twenty-eighth year, when his first great ro- 
mance came. It had an ending that was absolutely new 
in his love affairs — he married! This was in 1845. 

The lady was Sonia Sirota. She was a Russian actress, 
young, beautiful, fascinating, sympathetic, clever in an 
unconventional way, and she swept him off his feet. It 
was a rare love story — but it was not to last. Only a 
month after the birth of a daughter, whom he called 
Sophia in honor of his mother, he was seated at a table 
writing; Sonia, on the edge of his chair with her arm 
around his neck and her head close to his, was reading 
aloud a sentence or a paragraph that delighted them 
both. The door suddenly opened; two gendarmes en- 
tered with a warrant for his arrest. It was a lightning 
stroke. Prostrated with grief, Sonia saw him taken 
away. He was crushed. But nerving himself and think- 
ing only of her, he said, with that sweet smile of his, 
"Sonia, deshunka^ it is all a mistake. Soon will I return." 
He lied bravely — as a man should. 

The trial was brief, farcically so. The charge was the 
teaching of seditious doctrines — just what, is not known. 
Some Russian critics say he attacked the dogmas of the 
church; others charge clerical "graft" in connection 
with the State. He was sentenced to Siberia for five 
years. The parting between the married lovers was 
heart-rending. Sonia was in an agony of despair; and 
sobbing, she declared that even God could never in all 
the years console her for his absence. A young French 
lieutenant, however, succeeded two months later in ac- 
complishing what it had been declared impossible for a 
Higher Power to do in five years, and the couple fled to 

[29} 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

Paris — taking with them the child, Sophia. 

Larrovitch was sent first to Irkutsk where he served 
six months in the local etape and the remainder of the 
sentence in a small village on the shores of Lake Baikal 
— Baikalskaia. 

Of his prison life we know comparatively little. It was 
during this period of banishment that the divine spark 
in Larrovitch's soul burst into flame. He had dabbled in 
literature, but now it became a crusade, a holy mission, 
a fight for the big things of life, a fight with his pen. Un- 
like Dostoievsky who made "copy" out of his prison life, 
Larrovitch found in it inspiration. From the crushed 
grapes of his years of individual sorrow, he pressed wine 
of inspiration for the world. He never wrote about what 
happened to him; he merely let these long years as a 
mighty regenerating influence cleanse his soul of all bit- 
terness, pettiness and superficiality; he was filled with a 
divine ambition to begin his great life work. 

On his long trip home from Siberia one idea dominat- 
ed his mind — it was the joy of his home-coming to Sonia, 
his wife. She was the center of every thought of his 
waking moments, the atmosphere of his sleeping dreams. 
He finally reached Kiev; he ran all the way from the 
station to his little home. The place had been rented to 
new tenants; kind neighbors gently broke the story of 
his tragedy to him. He was prostrated and for three 
months suffered from brain-fever in the hospital at Kiev, 
being nursed by his mother, now widowed. Then in the 
days of convalescence, the mighty purpose of his life 
came back to him and with restored health he went to 
St. Petersburg — now Petrograd — for he could never live 
again at Kiev. 

Here he had a love affair with Hedwig Carlotta 

[30] 



'The Personal Side of farrovitch 

Hjarne, a Swedish lady of high social standing and keen 
literary judgment, sojourning with friends at the lega- 
tion. That they were married is disputed, but she was a 
loyal companion to him for two years. The story that she 
was a Swedish masseuse has been denied with clear evi- 
dence of its falsity, as is shown by Ivan Bartinski in his 
fascinatingly indiscreet volume "Larrovitch and His 
Loves," published in Moscow in 1893. With his morals 
or his immorals, in this and in later episodes, we have 
naught to do. At their worst, they form but a small 
mortgage on the fine estate of his noble character, his 
splendid mind and his rare soul. 

Finding the life at St. Petersburg too distracting for 
his literary work, he went to Tver where he spent some 
years. He was now in the full swing of his wonderful 
productive career. He wrote slowly but rarely revised. 
At this time he planned and blocked out his great tril- 
ogy, the three novels on Education, Justice, and Love 
as the essentials of all true freedom. This trilogy was 
not completed till 1881, the year of his death. 

In 1863 he went to Paris, for, alone in the world, he 
had now no ties. His mother had died leaving him an 
annuity which, while not large, gave him a certain free- 
dom. His French publishers invited him to the capital 
to work out details of the serial publication of "Vy vodne," 
—"The Right to Marriage"— then completed. He also 
wanted to be in closer touch with the Russian revolu- 
tionary branch established in Paris. His counsel, his 
plans, his organization, were the secret springs of many 
movements for freedom where his hand was never pub- 
licly known. 

His five years in Paris were the happiest of his life; 
he was honored, feted and admired; he was gleaning the 

[31} 



Feodor %)ladimir farrovitch 

harvest of his years of work. His genius, his wit, his 
sympathy, his brilliant conversation, keen philosophy, 
and that sweet smile of his that was characteristic, won 
him friends here as they had done in Russia. He loved 
freedom as the supreme gift of life; he loved America, 
which he called "the Land of the Great Hope," watched 
with feverish interest in those dark hours of our Civil 
War the daily struggle when the fate of the world's 
great democracy trembled in the balance. He contrib- 
uted articles on the War to Le Temps^ and at the Sor- 
bonne he delivered two series of lectures on "Russian 
History" and "The Awakening of the Russian People." 

In 1868, at the age of 51, he returned to Tver where 
he passed the remaining years of his life, occupied with 
the writing of his books, his contributions of essays to 
magazines, and occasional lectures. In 1880, his consti- 
tution, weakened by his years in Siberia and the ardor 
of his later literary labors, broke down. His clear mind 
and his knowledge of medicine made him realize it was 
the beginning of the end. He wanted only to live long 
enough to complete "Gospodi Pomi," the last volume in 
his great trilogy. He worked day and night feverishly 
in his battle against time and on February 18, 1881, the 
manuscript was completed. 

Weak, worn, and but a shadow of his former self, he 
left Tver for Yalta, that delightful summer resort of the 
Crimea at the foot of the Haila Mountains, on the edge 
of the sea. The balmy air seemed to revive him for a 
little; he seemed better but he knew it was but seeming, 
not reality. Early in March he had to take to the bed 
from which he never rose. 

On the afternoon of the 13th of March he was resting 
quietly, when the shrill call of newsboys shouting an 

[32] 



The Personal Side of JTarroviick 

"extra" came through the open window. He raised him- 
self with difficulty, leaned on one arm and listened. "As- 
sassination of Alexander 11" were the unbelievable 
words that he heard. Alexander, the great reformer, the 
liberator of the serfs, had been killed! Falling back on 
his pillow he murmured, "Oh, my poor, blinded coun- 
trymen, oh, the folly of it and the shame! You have put 
out the light of Russia's liberty" — and then, silence. 
The great heart of Larrovitch was stilled forever. 

William George Jordan 



\.:>z^ 



J^rrovitch'^ s 

PLACE IN LITERATURE 
^M'CREADY SYKES 



What did I read in Siberia? All manner of 
books — scores, hundreds of them. But the naming 
of them would mean little to you, as they meant 
little to me then. That is the great weakness with 
men who write — they depend entirely too much 
on books. In Siberia I read books to pass the time, 
for learning I read Nature — I read into the mystery 
of the stars and was taught breadth of mind from 
the far-flung horizon of the steppes, and the moun- 
tain peaks reaching into the sky led me upward 
from mundane things. 

From a letter to Radzill, the sculptor. 



1 SUPPOSE that wherever this day is being celebrated, 
wherever men are gathered together — as in so many far 
separate places they are gathered together — reverent 
comment is being made on the extraordinary coinci- 
dence whereby rumblings of the tremendous event fore- 
told by the greatest Russian of the 19th Century should 
be stirring the world within a few months before the 
centenary of his birth. Wherever men are paying tribute 
to the work and memory of Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, 
there assuredly are they pointing out the almost uncanny 
coincidence that the revolution, for which the influence 
of Larrovitch is above all others responsible, should have 
been attempted on the very eve of this sacred anniversary. 

How slow is the recognition of fame, oh! how swift its 
course and how irresistible its momentum when the 
weighing and sifting have been done and the judgment 
of mankind once formulated! When Larrovitch died, 
thirty-six years ago, few in this country had the slight- 
est acquaintance with his work. In France only the 
scholarly voice of Lanatiere; in England a single essay of 
Mr. Edmund Gosse — this covers almost the whole of 
the published recognition a generation ago of the now 
acknowledged master of Russian literature. I some- 
times think those are to be envied whose first acquain- 
tance with a great writer comes before fame has arrived; 
they have the thrill of discovery; before the wonder of it 
they stand like Keats' misplaced navigator: "Silent, 
upon a peak in Darien." 

Larrovitch was contemporary with the three great 
Russian novelists, Dostoievsky, Turgeniev and Tolstoi. 
The span of his life almost coincided with those of the 
first two. Born in 18 17, he was four years older than 
Dostoievsky, and they died within two months of each 
other. Turgeniev, born in 18 18, one year younger than 
Larrovitch, survived him by two years. It was the ar- 

[37] 



Feodor %)ladimir J^rrovitch 

rival of these four great men at the first maturity of their 
power that marked the beginning of modern Russian 
fiction, a httle before the middle of the century. 

If, through the veil of mysticism that obscures all 
Russian writers, we can trace the outlines of their theme, 
we shall see in each of them the preacher of a fairly co- 
herent gospel of life. That is, Russian literature is suf- 
fused by philosophy to a degree not reached in occi- 
dental fiction. And when we speak of literature on one 
side of the parallel and fiction on the other, it must be 
remembered that in Russia the novel is the exponent 
and medium of philosophy, religion and the whole the- 
ory of life. The thought of Russia finds expression in 
the novel as it does not find expression in England, 
France, Germany or the United States. And it is only 
occasionally, as in the case of Mr. Hardy, that we find a 
writer who through the medium of the novel consistent- 
ly sets forth, or rather suggests and adumbrates, a the- 
ory of life and the most profound speculations on the 
nature of reality and the whole problem of God and the 
moral order. 

Now it is that kind of approach that we find used by 
the Russian novelists. Each of them has given a vision 
— not with the sharp and clear-cut outlines familiar to 
our western modes of thought, but vague, indefinite — 
sometimes formless almost — a vision of the shadowy, 
tenuous kind, shot through with the mysticism that be- 
trays how vastly nearer to the orient than we are, is 
great amorphous Russia, with her mysticism, her shad- 
owy, elusive quality that baffles western analysis. I 
sometimes wonder whether Mr. Kipling was right. 
"East is East and West is West," but is it true that 
never the twain shall meet? Do they not meet and pre- 

C38] 



^Uo^Q^UiXy /Uyy/x.4iio^ 












C^LAJul^i"^* J^ Cl4^/^' 



^U/^/K^ 



A page from the Ms. of"Cras?2y Baba' in LarrovitcK s 
handwriting. Now in possession of the Authors Club 



J^rrovitcK s T'iace in jTiterature 

sent an aspect of both in the mysterious land that is it- 
self half European and half Asiatic? 

In an age when the struggle for civil and political free- 
dom seemed hopeless, Dostoievsky, that strange, crush- 
ed, baffled, unhappy hypochondriac, epileptic, the vic- 
tim of shattered nerves, looked at mankind through a 
temperament as illusory, as distorting as the veil of 
Maya. You remember how, in early manhood, with 
fiendish cruelty that bears witness to the thoroughness 
of their German training, the Russian officials had taken 
Dostoievsky and twenty-two other prisoners on an un- 
disclosed political charge, and how, after eight months in 
jail without hearing or even formal accusation, the pris- 
oners were suddenly taken one morning into the public 
square, where stood a scaffold, and were told that sen- 
tence of death had been passed on them. They were 
blindfolded and ranged for summary execution; the sig- 
nal to aim was given, and suddenly at the last moment 
announcement was made that the Emperor had gra- 
ciously commuted their sentence to imprisonment. Few 
men could live through such an experience and ever 
again have the old strength of spiritual texture. We 
must read Dostoievsky's interpretation in the light of 
his sufferings, of the meagerness, squalor and terror of 
his earlier life; his happy fortunes came later. 

You know, of course, how Dostoievsky solved the 
problem of the moral order. It was Parsifal's formula — 
durch Mittleid wis send — enlightenment through com- 
passion, compassion in its etymological sense of suffer- 
ing together, expiation, salvation by pity. It doesn't 
seem wholly sane and healthy, any more than it does in 
Wagner's work, and, of course, to call Dostoievsky sane 
or healthy would be to put a strain on adjectives of ap- 

[393 



Feodor ^Vladimir JTarrovitch 

probation that would tax the literary ability of the 
Ninety-three German Intellectuals. Dostoievsky's char- 
acters are all angels or beasts. No one is normal. Life 
as he shows it is not normal. He is very distinctly an ac- 
quired taste. 

Turgeniev left Russia at forty-two, never to return 
except at rare intervals. He represented the liberals, as 
opposed to Dostoievsky, who was the exponent of the 
Slavophiles. As his work progressed he seemed to be- 
come convinced of the futility of the revolutionary aims, 
and grew almost bitter. His work at all times displayed 
the rare culture, precision and clearness which gave him 
during his own life his great European fame, to be eclipsed 
by that of Tolstoi in the generation into which Tolstoi 
lived after Turgeniev's death. 

Tolstoi, whose fame was afterwards surpassed by the 
great master whose birthday we celebrate tonight, even 
as Tolstoi had overtaken Turgeniev, was eight or ten 
years younger than Dostoievsky and Turgeniev, and, 
born in 1828, hardly felt the influence of the revolu- 
tions of 1848. He was neither Slavophile nor liberal; he 
gradually developed the doctrine of non-resistance with 
which the world has become familiar, sometimes un- 
pleasantly so, and avowed himself a true Nihilist, that 
is, as he himself expressed it, "subject to no faith or 
creed whatever." 

This is not the time for a discussion of these three 
great names in Russian literature. I mention them 
merely to recall the groping, the almost blind groping, 
of the greatest literary creative minds of Russia, to show 
how a new and vital impulse was given to the body of 
Russian thought by the great genius who is honored 
wherever men are gathered together in memory of the 

[40] 



cCarrovitch! s T*lace in fiterature 

greatest name in the annals of Russian literature, the 
name of Larrovitch. 

Larrovitch's genius, self-determined and transcendent 
as it was, was slow in finding expression. At first his 
note was one of protest. What among his contempo- 
raries seemed the dawning of the light — that false dawn 
that led so many noble intellects down the dance of 
futile aspiration — was comprehended by him with the 
vivid insight of genius. It was dreaming an old dream. 
The phrase occurs constantly through his earlier work — 
"dreaming an old dream." But Larrovitch was gifted 
with an insight more profound than the grim pity of 
Dostoievsky, the sentimentality of Turgeniev or the 
weak renunciation of Tolstoi. The same sun that melts 
wax hardens clay. With all his mysticism, with all the 
Slavic color and half oriental temperament, Larrovitch 
had philosophic insight, mental processes that were 
splendidly inductive, the scientific method of the Euro- 
pean mind. For the dreaming of the old dream he had 
the true sympathy of the Slav, but he had what had 
never been granted to Dostoievsky, Turgeniev or Tol- 
stoi, what in an earlier day had been unknown to Gogol 
or even to the cosmopolitan Pushkin; he had the intel- 
lectual grasp of nineteenth century Europe. 

Virile as was the genius of the great Russian, the note 
of tenderness that suffuses so much of his work frequently 
suggests the query as to the influence upon him of the 
women with whom he was brought in contact, and most 
of all, of his wife. Her sudden elopement with a French 
officer within two months of Larrovitch's sentence of 
exile is one of the mysteries of literary biography, for 
the life of Larrovitch and his wife had seemed a true ro- 
mance made real. What was the vague cause of unrest 

[41] 



Feodor '\Jladimir JTarrovitch 

that finally culminated in the blow has never been really- 
known. Their daily life had been marked by a singular 
felicity of adjustment. With his passionate love of na- 
ture, Larrovitch would spend hours along the streams, 
observing aquatic phenomena, often taking by nets or 
lines the fish for contemplation, or perhaps bringing 
them home to help out the plain fare that then marked 
the fine simplicity of the master's household. His wife 
meanwhile, in an age when the ideas of commerce and 
manufacturing had hardly penetrated the mind of Rus- 
sia, was keenly interested in all kinds of textiles, silks, 
linens, cottons, everything of the sort. In fact, she 
would accumulate from among the neighbors during the 
week, picturesque panniers or baskets of these fabrics, 
soiled by usage or wear, and by the application of sapo- 
naceous agents and enthusiastic personal labor would 
work far into the night demonstrating the chemical re- 
actions and cleansing effects of her various devices aided 
by her own physical efforts. It was science aided by 
muscle, and the stipendiary emoluments exacted by 
Larrovitch's wife from the owners of the garments, a 
kind of honorarium willingly rendered did, in the trying 
days of the res angustae domi, help things out consider- 
ably. Often, too, while these practical chemical and 
economic demonstrations were being carried on by his 
energetic consort, Larrovitch would lend to local groups 
the benefit of his broad vision and clear insight, giving 
to his contemporaries by the spoken word the clearest 
commentary on the tangled web of European public life. 
During these happy days arose the outrageous slander 
that Larrovitch went fishing and talked politics while 
his wife took in washing. The libel was inspired by a 
malicious interpretation of a thoroughly harmonious 

[42] 



JTarrovitch' s T^lace in JTiterature 

apportionment of vocation and avocation based not less 
on the respective abilities of the life-partners than on 
their varying temperaments. The highly symbolical 
remark attributed to Larrovitch's wife on her flight 
with the French officer — "Thank God, I've washed my 
last shirt!" — baffling as its deeper significance seems, 
should not be interpreted in the light of any such crassly 
materialistic conception. 

Larrovitch's first book, "Crasny Baba" — "The Red 
Woman" — a collection of short stories, adolescent scraps, 
appeared in 1852, when he was thirty-five years old. It 
is of varying merit. Most of the sketches are of a thous- 
and words or so; naturally no attempt is made at a sys- 
tematic philosophy. Indeed, the whole work is still too 
charged with symbolism for that. An almost Carlylean 
transcendental rhapsodic treatment is much in evidence. 
Here is the famous "Address to the Samovar," said by 
some of his critics to be full of a very subtle symbolism, 
which we must frankly confess passes quite over the 
heads of us occidentals. 

In his Ikte twenties Larrovitch was delving deep in 
the profound searchings of Kant. Although thoroughly 
at home in German, he seems to have taken no interest 
in philosophy till Kant began to circulate in Russia in 
the vulgar tongue. We must remember that Kant was 
not translated into Russian until after 1830, so that to 
Larrovitch's ardent mind the "Critique of Pure Rea- 
son" was projected against the background of Alexander 
I's apostacy from liberalism and Nicholas I's frank 
policy of reaction. To Larrovitch it then seemed that 
Kant with his philosophy, trudging back and forth at 
Koenigsburg and never traveling a hundred miles from 
home, had come nearer the eternal verities than the po- 

[43] 



Feodor %)ladimir farrovitch 

litical leaders of the days of '48. Larrovitch anticipated 
Hegel in his development of the conception of existence 
as a flowing stream, a process of becoming, and in his 
second work, "Ivan Soronko," published in 1859, he 
flung a bold challenge alike to the Slavophile propagan- 
da of Dostoievsky and the gentle liberalism of Turgeniev. 
"There is nothing good but a good will." In this pro- 
found saying of Kant he read the future of human de- 
velopment, and in the splendid character oi Ivan Soron- 
ko he symbolized the spirit of the liberation of Russia. 
Soronko was portrayed as one of the great Cossack brig- 
ands, a kind of glorified Robin Hood, the incarnation of 
the Transcendent Will. The conception was a purely 
spiritual one, a conception worked out in great detail 
in Larrovitch's correspondence with Mazzini. Indeed, 
Mazzini has stated in more than one of his letters that 
his vision of a free Italy was little more than the filled 
out and complete idealization of the noble symbolism of 
Ivan Soronko. "It was from Russia," writes Mazzini, 
"that I learned the sublimity, the grandeur, the divine 
form of that free Italy that throughout my life, often in 
exile and against the onslaught of every opportunist 
from Piedmont to the Sicilies, I preached to my coun- 
trymen." 

"Chorny Khleb" — "Black Bread" — was published in 
i860, one year after "Ivan Soronko." Like its prede- 
cessor, it had a tremendous vogue. It is a collection of 
peasant stories, big, strong stories, each with a resonant 
thought. Men wondered how the author had attained 
such insight into the peasant soul. Here again Larro- 
vitch preached the gospel of the spiritual awakening. 
Here we see the reflex influence of Mazzini, many pas- 
sages recalling the most eloquent preachings of the 

[44] 



JTarrovitc/i s T*lace in JTiterature 

"Duties of Man." 

Larrovitch had in full measure the saving virtue of 
humor, and in more than one of these stories he plays 
with gentle irony on the grim and mordant despairing 
horrors of Dostoievsky. One of these stories, "The Love 
Affairs of the Philosophic Pig," so aroused the wrath of 
Dostoievsky's followers that one of them challenged Lar- 
rovitch to a duel, to whom Larrovitch wrote in reply: 
"Surely no writer has a monopoly of scene and setting. 
In choosing the pigsty for a frankly humorous tale, have 
I offended by peopling it with pigs instead of men?" 

In the '6o's Larrovitch made a long sojourn in Paris, 
where he perceived with clearer vision than most Euro- 
peans the utterly unsubstantial foundation of Louis 
Napoleon's empire. Here, in 1866, he wrote "Vyvodne" 
— "The Right to Marriage" — published simultaneously 
in France and Russia. This was his one sex novel. In 
Russia, as in the German army today, one had to marry 
within his own caste, and Larrovitch apprehended with 
clear vision how rapidly the caste system was again 
growing up in France on the ruins of the republic. The 
coup d'etat was a social as well as a political usurpation. 
In this work, under thinly veiled symbolism, Larrovitch 
suggested a separation of the functions of marriage, 
those of affection, sympathy and companionship, from 
those having to do with the propagation of the race; 
frankly inquiring whether the acceptance or the refusal 
of human parentage should not be left entirely to the 
decision of the woman. The doctrine was afterwards 
wittily paraphrased by an American critic — a member, 
by the way, of this club, still happily with us — as "local 
option on maternity." The suggestion of the separation 
into its component parts of the dual-purpose marriage 

{45} 



Feodor %)ladimir Ji\irrovitch 

has since been exploited, playfully perhaps, by Mr. Ber- 
nard Shaw in one of his characteristic prefaces. 

It was in Paris that the great inspiration came into 
Larrovitch's life and work, an inspiration, it is interest- 
ing to note, from our side of the water. Larrovitch fol- 
lowed with absorbing interest the fortunes of our Civil 
War, 1861-1865. He frequently referred to America as 
"the Great Hope." Larrovitch's friendship with Tur- 
geniev had its inspiring bond in their common work for 
the emancipation of the serfs, and although during the 
time when this was actually going on, Larrovitch was in 
Paris, he was following the situation in Russia with 
keen interest. 

You know how, with the freeing of the serfs, Turgeniev 
regarded the great aspiration of his life fulfilled, and, 
indeed, Turgeniev had done much to bring it about; but 
as time went on and he saw how narrow was the scope 
of the hoped-for regeneration, he became embittered. 
Not so with Larrovitch; from the very first he regarded 
the freeing of the serfs as hardly more than the outward 
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace not yet 
given to men, as a faint symbol rather of the mighty 
spiritual awakening to which he devoted the working of 
his genius. 

In that wonderful little story of his, "Swept and 
Garnished," a sketch of less than six thousand words, he 
preaches by means of clear allegory his persistent creed 
that the awakening of Russia must come in the souls of 
the Russian people — the eternal apphcation of the truth 
of the saying of the fourth gospel. "And ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Larro- 
vitch was impatient of Tolstoi's doctrine of renuncia- 
tion and non-resistance; he looked on Dostoievsky's 

[46} 



JTarrovitc/i s Vlace in JTiterature 

morbid apotheosis of squalor, suffering and disease as a 
teaching almost degenerate; he anticipated, long before 
the bitter truth had come home to Turgeniev himself, 
the smugness, the sheer futility of mere preachments of 
political liberalism. "And the truth shall make you 
free." When the soul of Russia should once have come 
to true self-determination, when the Transcendent Will 
should have actually become incarnate, when the spiri- 
tual emancipation should be complete — then no more 
dreaming an old dream. The elan vital of Bergson is a 
crude, inadequate, almost mechanical conception of the 
Absolute compared with what Larrovitch describes as 
the Transcendent Will — the developed conception, in 
the light of the scientific thought of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, of that Will wherein Kant had found the moving 
power of all that is good. Larrovitch resolved the Kan- 
tian antinomies by means of a conception of the Will as 
the ultimate form of functioning of the Absolute, trans- 
cending the Kantian limitations of time and space as 
fundamental and necessary categories of the under- 
standing, making time and space rather modes of the 
Transcendent Will. His insistence on the objective 
reality of time and space, a position puzzling to critics 
in the early '70's, must be apprehended in the light of his 
thoroughly dynamic conception of the Absolute, and of 
his anticipation, now quite obvious, of the profounder 
conclusions of pragmatism. 

In 1870, after his return from Paris, Larrovitch pub- 
lished what is usually, and I think rightly, regarded as 
his magnum opus, "Barin! Barin!" — "Master! Master!" 
a work so vast, so tersely compact, so expressive that it 
is one of the most elusive, most difficult of analyses. 
The strange character of Dmetri Trepoff, the old chem- 

[47} 



Feodor IJIadimir jTarrovitch 

ist with his troupe of whistling marmots, is used as a 
symboHc leitmotif. In an old retort from his laboratory, 
Dmitri has imprisoned the principle of life, and as the 
weird bizarre figure moves through the story, transform- 
ing the country groups of children with a wave of his curi- 
ous bottle, stealing to the throne-room of the emperor 
and leaving the bewildered courtiers with blanched faces 
and quaking knees, the effect of his presence is "incal- 
culably diffusive," to use George Eliot's phrase. In Rus- 
sia they had always lived under some form of control. 
The freeing of the serfs called for a new kind of master, 
and this master was to be Education. As in the United 
States the South after the war suffered from carpetbag 
control, so in Russia after the freeing of the serfs did 
the country suffer from ignorance. Russia must be 
saved by truth. 

In 1879, when Larrovitch was working easily in the 
fine maturity of his great powers, he published "Dvornik" 
— "The Keeper of the Door." In Russia one's personal 
servant sleeps on a mat outside the door. In this keeper 
of the door Larrovitch typified the guardian of the de- 
mocracy that he foretold as coming to the world. The 
keynote is Justice, Justice the Protector of Democracy. 
With clearer vision than any of his contemporaries Lar- 
rovitch had seen the pernicious effect of the German in- 
fluence creeping over Russia, and in that familiar chap- 
ter so much quoted in recent years he predicts with al- 
most uncanny prescience the world war. This book has 
been called the story of the American spirit in Russia, 
and it is here that Larrovitch makes Ivan Tyumen say 
in his address to the nobles: "Mistake not the need. 
Mistake it not. For the coming empire of the people 
we must have a world that shall be safe" — a striking 

[48] 




An alleged portrait of Larrovitch as a young man, taken from 

a group painted at the time of Larrovitch' s exile 

in Irkutsk by a native artist 




The last portrait of Larrovitch, said to have been made shortly 

before his death. The original hangs in the 

Traitokof Museum in Moscow 



farrovitcK s T^lace in J^terature 

anticipation of President Wilson's great pronouncement 
— "We must make the world safe for democracy." 

In 1 88 1, shortly after his death appeared "Gospodi 
Pomi," — "Lord Have Mercy." This work sets forth in 
greater amplitude the essentials of his philosophy; artis- 
tically it is, I believe, somewhat overweighted by its di- 
dactic burden. But it is a grand legacy to his people — 
a legacy, indeed, to men of liberal thought in all times 
and all nations. In it he rises to the height of the great 
argument, and justifies the ways of God to man. Here 
the splendid optimism of his nature guides him to the 
summit whence the world-vision is one of ineffable 
grandeur; for the first time in Russian literature is the 
high note struck of absolute faith in a universe wherein 
there is no lawlessness, no confusion of plan, a universe 
slowly evolving to the realization of the divine plan 
wherein man and all his boundless capacities are seen 
as the fine flower and fruition of the Transcendent Will. 

When Larrovitch died, it was truly said by the fore- 
most English critic, in a letter which for political rea- 
sons it was for more than twenty years deemed unwise 
to publish: — "Larrovitch's work is done. From this 
moment the Russian revolution is inevitable, but now 
we have learned that it must be founded on a spiritual 
awakening." The assassin's bomb that almost as the 
master was breathing his last, blew Alexander II into 
eternity, served but to delay the time. 

The best memorial to Larrovitch's genius is the de- 
finitive centenary edition just published in fourteen vol- 
umes. It includes the well-known biography by Maz- 
henov, a collection of his inimitable letters, his masterly 
contribution to science and his heretofore unpubhshed 
diary in Siberia. 

[49] 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

In this brief outline I have tried, how imperfectly I 
realize, to indicate the rank of this great name. It is to 
Germany, with the towering genius of Goethe, to Eng- 
land, with the clear supremacy of Shakespeare, that we 
must look for a fitting parallel. Whether in the long 
course of the evaluation by posterity of the work of the 
great ones on earth, when our descendants shall, as the 
centuries go by, gather to praise famous men, Larro- 
vitch's place shall be taken by some other, it were pre- 
sumptuous to hazard a guess. What new names may 
then be on men's lips we may not say. Today, all over 
the world is there accord of judgment. Tonight we but 
speak the verdict of contemporary civilization when 
upon the wreath with which we crown that brow, 
noble and serene in death, we inscribe the words: 

''Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, supreme master of Russian 
thought^ prophet of the world's dream come true.'* 

M'Cready Sykes 



[50] 



SOME TRANSLATIONS FROM 

J^rrovitch 

-o^RICHARDSON WRIGHT 



Y ES, the dead live," said Father Sergius. There 
was a look of distance in his eye and a great peace 
lighted his countenance. "I am sure of that. We 
should not mourn for them, we should rejoice. They 
can be very close to us." 

"And how?" asked the old man. 

"They are dead if we wish them dead. They 
live if we wish them to live. They will be far away 
if we wish them far away. They will be very near 
if we wish them very near. Love is the secret. Love 
gives them life. Love brings them close to us. Do 
you understand?" 

But the starosta did not understand. 

From "Barin! Barin!" 



T)awn on the Steppe" 

OONIA awoke with a start. 

She glanced around the room, her eyes half opened. 

Gradually the memory of the night came to her — the 
ghastly memory of that bacchanale. 

With a weary hand she brushed the hair back from 
her temples, letting its thick black curls cascade down 
her snowy white shoulders and over the lace of her night- 
gown. 

In a cot bed on the other side of the room by the stove 
lay Peter Ivanovitch. Loose and limp like a damp rag 
his arm hung over the side. His face was still purple 
from the drinking of the night before. He lay as he had 
fallen into the bed — with half his clothes on, although 
in compassion for him Sonia had removed his boots 
which were soiling the sheets. 

The house was very still. Outside a dog barked. Two 
others answered mournfully. 

Sonia glanced about, bewildered at the chaos of the 
room — the table with the remains of the wedding feast, 
the empty bottles, the scattered bits of cake, the broken 
goblets on the floor. 

A shiver shook her like October wind the aspen. 

On a chair by the bed lay her clothes in orderly array. 
Sonia had been well brought up by the best of mothers, 
and even at the end of her tempestuous wedding night 
had not forgotten to be neat about her underlinen. 

She glanced again at Peter Ivanovitch, and then 
cautiously slid out of bed. As her toes touched the cold 
floor, she shivered and gathered the nightgown about 
her. 

[A description here, presumably of how Sonia put on 
her linen, has been censored by the Holy Synod in the 

* From " Vyvodne" 

[53} 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

interest of morals.] 

Sonia slowly opened the door and passed out Into the 
hall. 

No one was up in the house. From the porter's room 
came muffled snores. She tiptoed down the passage, 
quietly pushed back the great wooden bolt, and went 
out into the street. 

The house stood on the edge of the town. Beyond lay 
the barns and pastures of the Ivanovitch farm. Rapidly 
Sonia made her way past them and came to the edge of 
the steppe. There it lay, a great, flat, gray blanket of 
snow stretching to the horizon. Never a tree, never a 
bush. Only the beaten road before her that zigzagged 
off like a brown snake. On the horizon two parallel 
shafts widened across the gray sky. Slowly they con- 
verged. The sun broke out, the snow changed from dun 
to silver — a great sea crested with white waves. 

The air was deathly still. Smoke from a chimney in 
the town rose straight like a ramrod into the cool, crisp 
blue air. 

Sonia turned. Tears stood in her eyes. 

Must she go back to him ? 

She gathered her shawl tighter about her. Must she 
go? 

From the church tower boomed the first bell. It 
ricocheted, hummed and died down the street. 

There was a rattle of pails. A lone dog poked its nose 
and came slowly toward Sonia. She glanced down at it. 
It would soon be a mother. The thought was revolting 
to her. 

At the farther end of the street a woman in a red 
shawl crossed with two pails swinging from a bar over 
her shoulder. 

[54] 



S^i>ril26. 1817—§^i>ril26, 1917 



s 



N recognition of the genius of 
Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, the 
great Russian novelist, poet and 
patriot and to do honor to his memo' 
ry, the Authors Club will hold a 
centenary celebration, at the club 
rooms, on April 26th at 9 P. M., 
the one hundredth anniversary of 
his birth. 

A program fitting to the occasion 
has been prepared. It includes 
papers by members, recollections of 
the great author, stereopticon views 
of Larrovitch's home and the places 
touching his life, an exhibition of 
Larrovitch relics and the presenta^ 
tion to the club of an authentic mss. 
from the pages of "Crasny Baba." 

The Committee 

Invitation to the Larrovitch Centenary Celebration held at 
the Authors Club, April 26th, igij 



Some Translations from JTarrovitch 

Sonia threw back her head resolutely and drank in 
the air. A little wind wafted down breeze the rich odor 
from the cattle byres. 

It bred a thought. Her eyes glistened. 

Slowly she started to retrace her steps. She was weep- 
ing. Tears coursed down her face. Between the bars of 
its window a milch cow contemplated her languidly. 

She stumbled on. 

The Samovar"" 

When Maria saw Father Sergius turn in the yard, 
she flew to the stove and filled the samovar with fresh 
coals and water. 

In the front room, her father, the starosta^ waited. 
Each afternoon Father Sergius came up the long village 
street, stopped on the way to speak a word or two with 
the people of his tiny parish, and then turned into the 
house of the town elder for his glass of tea. He had been 
doing this now ever since he came to Novo-Birsk, some 
seven years, and the starosta and he had grown to be as 
brothers. Sometimes the priest would talk of things the 
old man could not understand, but that made no dif- 
ference because often enough their talk would turn on 
things he did understand — crops and spring plowing, 
the fowls and the need of a new barn for the mir or re- 
pairs to the church. 

"Maria, he's coming," called the old man. 

"I have the samovar ready," she replied from the 
kitchen. 

At that moment Father Sergius thumped up the steps. 
Maria ran to open the door and greet him on the thresh- 

*From "Barin! Sarin!" 

[55] 



Feodor "Vladimir JTarrovitch 

old. He came in, threw his hat on the table and kissed 
the starosta on both cheeks as was his custom. 

"And how are you this afternoon, my brother?" It 
was the usual opening of their conversation, never vary- 
ing from season to season. 

"Well enough, thank God," answered the starosta. 

Father Sergius seated himself across from the old 
man at the table, and Maria brought in the samovar, 
placing it between them. There was naught of worldli- 
ness about Father Sergius. His cassock was worn through 
the elbows and ragged on hem and cuffs. It bore the 
stains of many a meal. His hair, too, was unkempt and 
his thin beard scraggly. A large mole pronounced the 
bridge of his nose. His hands were soiled and gnarled; 
one thumb was in a bandage. He had been working in 
the glebe all the forenoon. But for all this dirt a light 
shone in his countenance as of one who has looked on 
The Thing unafraid. 

Slowly he poured out the starosta s tea, then a glass for 
himself, and settled back in his chair. The old man was 
peculiarly taciturn. His great rugged face, seamed and 
wrinkled like a boulder of granite, held a patient look. 
All peasants have that look — that thick, uncompre- 
hending wonder. 

For some time neither of them spoke. 

It was Father Sergius who first broke the silence. 
"Andrew, what would we do without the samovar?" 

The starosta shook his head. 

"Behold it! It glistens like the countenance of a good 
man! It pours forth the warmth of friendship! Within 
its heart glow the kindly coals! And see how strong it 
stands, how well-formed, how broad shouldered! Watch 
the aspiring clouds of steam that pour from it and float 



Some Translations from JTarrovitch 

upward toward Heaven ! Look at the little chainik* rest- 
ing there comfortably on the top, like a child in its 
mother's arms! See the glasses and saucers that cluster 
about its feet, like the little chicks about the feet of the 
mother hen ! See, it reflects your face and mine, it makes 
us brothers, it warms our hearts! How noble it is, how 
beautiful, how humble in service!" 

"It should be," muttered the starosta^ "it cost ten 
roubles." 

Richardson Wright 

*Tea pot 



[57 1 






THREE INCIDENTAL POEMS OF 

j(jirrovitch 

-<>?GEORGE SIDNEY HELLMAN 



1 OU must remember that we Russians are a 
singing people. Our soldiers sing on the march, 
our peasants sing as they work in the fields, the 
women as they go about their household duties. 
You are quite wrong in thinking us a gloomy race. 
Come to Russia some day, and I shall show you 
these things. 

From a letter to Remi Kains. 



While the fame of Larrovitch springs from his 
novels and short stories, he was also a very talented 
writer of verse. Those of you who have read "Vyvodne" 
will recall the three little lyrics included among the pages 
of that novel. The charm of these songs was recognized 
by a publisher in Paris, who issued them in a separate 
volume that, now practically unobtainable, is the chief 
rarity sought after by collectors of the works of Larro- 
vitch. 

The poems which I have now the good fortune to 
bring to your attention, are verses hitherto unknown to 
the world of letters, and so it may perhaps not be unin- 
teresting to relate the circumstances through which they 
came into my hands. 

Some nine months ago a Russian diplomat of my ac- 
quaintance who had, like so many Russian noblemen, 
decided gambling proclivities, happened to tell me that 
he was heavily interested in a company whose shares are 
dealt in on the New York Stock Exchange. As some of 
the gentlemen now present may have distressing recol- 
lections in connection with the spectacular career of 
these shares, friendly discretion leads me to refrain from 
mentioning the corporation by name. At any rate, on 
the day previous to the aforesaid conversation, I had, 
quite inadvertently (in the locker room of a golf club) 
overheard the president of the company advise one of 
his best friends to purchase the stock. This I told in 
confidence to my Russian acquaintance, who thanked 
me profusely. A fortnight went by and we met again. 
In the meantime, the shares had broken violently, and I 
was about to express my regret to the Russian at the 
loss in which I had, with the best of intentions, involved 
him, when, with beaming face and both hands out- 
stretched, he greeted me with the statement that in view 
of the information I had given him, he had at once sold 

[6i] 



Feodor %Jladimir farrovitch 

all his shares. As I have said, he was a diplomat. 

About half a year went by, and I had almost forgotten 
the episode, when a letter postmarked Petrograd ar- 
rived. "I have not forgotten the good turn you did me 
shortly before I left New York," he wrote, "and you 
must not object if I give myself the pleasure of sending 
you a slight token of appreciation. Knowing your ad- 
miration for one of the greatest of my country's authors, 
I am sending you three manuscript poems by Larro- 
vitch, recently discovered by a bookseller of Petrograd. 
I am sending with them the English translations that I 
have myself ventured to make." 

It is worth noting, as both the handwriting and the 
contents make evident, that these three poems, of which 
I shall read you my paraphrases in verse based on my 
friend's versions in prose, belong to far separated epochs 
in the life of Larrovitch. The first is a love song of his 
pre-nuptial days, having, curiously enough, a prophetic 
note, however unconscious, inasmuch as the woman 
that he married was later to elope with a young French 
officer. It is entitled 

LYRIC 

Dearest^ I fling you a rose. 
Red as the blood of my heart. 
Look without. See how it snows; 
How the reckless wind doth dart. 
Cutting and biting he goes. 
Dearest, I fling you a rose. 

As melt the winter s snows. 

So shall its fragrance depart. 

Drink deep, while love' s fountain flows , 

[62} 



Three Incidental Voems of JTarrovttch 

Hand to handy lips to lips^ heart to heart. 
For e'en love dies away^ my rose, 
As melt the winter s snows. 

I need hardly point out that this poem, which is in a 
general way similar to the love song included in the 
fourth chapter of "Crasny Baba," belongs to that class 
of poetry to which writers of many ages, from the Greek 
anthologists, down through Herrick, to numerous lyri- 
cists of our day, have so frequently contributed, and that 
in its treatment of the philosophy expounded alike by 
Omar in his "Rubaiyat," and Horace in his "Carpe 
Diem," it is of a kind that might have as readily come 
from an English, or an American, as from a Russian pen. 

In the next poem, however, (although here, too, is 
struck the universal note that underlies the philosophy 
of courage) the local color is Russian and the character 
of the verses is peculiarly allied with the personal ex- 
periences of their author. It will be remembered that 
during the years 1 845-1850 Larrovitch was an exile in 
Siberia. In the present "Marching Song" he exercises 
caution, refraining from reference to cruelties imposed 
upon political exiles, and exemplifies the spirit of bravery 
in a Siberian theme less familiar to the world at large. 
In the verses we see a group of men, not sent away in 
punishment for political offenses, but setting forth (like 
the companions of Behring in the time of Peter the 
Great) to discover new lands and seas, to dominate by 
force of the spirit of man that vast domain of Siberia, 
which was for Larrovitch, we may readily believe, the 
symbol of resistance over which the fearless human in- 
tellect should yet rise dominant. 



{(>2^ 



Feodor ^Vladimir jTarrovitc/i 
SIBERIAN MARCHING SONG 

JVe march along the Moscow road, 

Five score adventurous men. 

The North Lights glitter in our eyes; 

A continent shall be our prize. 

Though cold slays five — twice five! — why then. 

We march along the Moscow road., 

Four score brave men and ten. 

We march along the Moscow road. 
Four score brave men and ten. 
Tobolsk is passed, Yakutsk is near. 
Ha! ice and snow, think ye we J ear? 
Take twice your toll. We pay it. Then 
We march along the Moscow road. 
Four score adventurous men. 

We march along the Moscow road. 

Four score adventurous men. 

Though crows shall flock to those that die. 

And we gnaw shoe-straps, you and I, 

And famine slays again, again 

We march along the Moscow road, 

A Jew adventurous men. 

The last of the poems that my Russian friend sent me 
is entitled "The Exile." Written in blank verse, it com- 
prises lines replete not alone with the melancholy senti- 
ment characteristic of Russian literature, but also with 
that sadness which old age feels when it contemplates 
the unfulfilled aspirations of early days. The years of 
Larrovitch are here approaching their end, and though 
he still (a new and not uninteresting biographical fact) 

[64} 



Three Incidental T*oems ofjTarrovitch 

finds solace in romantic companionship, the poet, in 
paying tribute to a younger martyr of intellectual ideal- 
ism, sorrowfully recurs to the dreams and labors of his 
own valiant youth. 

THE EXILE 

How sad, my beloved, how sad to think oj the 

springtime departed. 
While the December wind, angrily biting the shutters. 
And spitting forth icicles. 
Howls its discord, loud and drear. 

But sadder my heart for you, courageous lad, 
Who must so far away, and for so long a while. 
Never, I fear me, to return. 

Yet here, clothed in comfortable furs. 
With my beloved nestling at my knees, 
I think of you with reverent envy. 
And leave untasted the wine cup. 
Pondering my own youth. 

George Sidney Hellman 



{.^S'\ 



^z 



FIVE 

J^rrovitch 

LETTERS 
^THOMAS WALSH 



1 HIS morning I have drained seven glasses of 
tea and written seven letters. If I could contain 
more tea, doubtless I would write more letters ! A 
drop of rum in your tea, Ivan Georgevitch, might 
increase your capacity for correspondence. 

From a letter to I. G. Betenkoff, 

Larro'vitch' s publisher. 



In the compacted space of a few pages it is prac- 
tically impossible to give adequate representation of the 
letters of Larrovitch. He was an indefatigable and vol- 
uminous correspondent, in fact, during his later years, 
he devoted more time to correspondence than to the 
actual pursuit of his literary calling. Living in an age 
when correspondence was not limited to scrappy lines 
on a post card, he often let his letters run on to many 
pages. Some of his finest sentiments and most vivid bits 
of description can be found in these letters, the five re- 
produced here are all from the period 1875-1880 and 
represent his mature thought. 

The first is to his good friend Lanatiere. The letter 
opens with some personal affairs, then continues: 

"... I often wonder if readers of books appreciate the great 
cost a book is to its author — the price in living. Some men 
exist to live, but an author lives to write. From his observa- 
tions, his privations, his pleasures, his romances, his adven- 
tures he is constantly distilling the pure essence from which 
is made the fragrant perfume of literature. Not that all men 
pay this price; a few do, and it is proven in the lasting quality 
of their work. 

"I always advise a young writer to follow these rules: Work 
less and loaf more; write less and observe more; above all, 
crowd the day full of experiences, purify and strengthen it 
with activities, come into your literary manhood greatly, like 
a noble ship coming into port freighted with all manner of 
goods from many lands. 

"The writing of youth often possesses a singular ecstacy, 
but its great weakness lies in its immaturity. Youth is too im- 
patient, is not willing to wait until experience and observa- 
tion settle and formulate. On the other hand, the writing of 
old age lacks this ecstacy because it waits too long. There is 
always the moment to write, just as there is always the mo- 
ment to take the peruskies out of the pan. 

"I used the word 'ecstacy.' I like it. And the older I grow 
the more I believe that its presence is the ultimate test of 
good writing. Not necessarily an ecstacy of form, but a ra- 

[69] 



Feodor '\)ladimir cCarrovitch 

pidity of action, a quickness of perception which comes from 
being so full of a subject that one writes easily and joyfully, 
as a fountain gushes. Writing which is based on a thorough 
knowledge of a subject invariably convinces me. To some 
men this knowledge is mature scholarship, to others an under- 
standing of men and women and nature. But knowledge of 
some sort must be there. 

"Dear fellow, I did not mean to write at such length, and I 
could go on writing thus for hours. We authors love to talk 
about our craft. I think this is well." 

The next letter, written en route to the Crimea, was 
to a Madame Martinoff in reply to her criticism of the 
character of Katherine Feodorovna in "Vyvodne." 
Katherine Feodorovna is a brilliant woman of elder 
years who serves as confidant to certain of the younger 
women in Perm where the story is laid.* Madame Mar- 
tinoff, it appears, objected to the cynicism of the char- 
acter, Larrovitch's reply, written with unquestioned 
graciousness, nevertheless contains, between the lines, 
some volleys which, it is to be hoped, did not entirely 
pass over the head of the good lady at the time. 

My Dear Madame Martinoff: 

"The post has just arrived and I find your letter. Although 
I would prefer to give your criticism of Katherine Feodorovna 
more lengthy consideration before replying, the demands on 
my time — passed mostly on trains and in strange hotels these 
days — necessitate my answering you immediately. 

"You say that women do not speak as cynically as I have 
made Katherine Feodorovna speak. May I beg to differ with 
you and offer a correction.'' What you doubtless meant to say 
was that hitherto it has not been the fashion for women in 
novels to speak cynically; it has been the custom to make 
them utter platitudes — sweet and endearing — which draw 
the picture of helplessness, indolence and irresponsibility. 

*For a passage in which Katherine Feodorovna figures, see the opening 
paragraphs of "The True and False About Larrovitch," p. 77. 

[70] 



The Larrovitch 
Centenary Celebration 

1817—1917 



The forthcoming definitive edition of the works 
of Larrovitch, to be published as a centenary 
tribute, will be hailed with joy by all lovera 
of Russia's novelist, patriot and philosopher. 
Surely, it is a sign of the re-awakening of Russia 
that the voice of this great author should speak 
again in this hour of the nation's fight for world 
liberty. Russkoe Slovo, December 12, 1916 

From out the land of sunrise, dispelling the 
murk of evil report, rises the figure of Larro- 
vitch . . . to whom the world will some day 
pay just tribute. 

James Trotter in The London Times 

Plusieurs, sans doute, ont defini I'dme Russe, 
mats il n'est aucun qui I'ait analysee aussi claire- 
ment dans tous ses attributs que Teodor Vladi- 
mir Larrovitch. Marcel Lanatierc 



The Authors Chib 



April the Twenty-sixth 
Nineteen Seventeen 



First page of the program of the Larrovitch Centenary 
Celebration., with Lanati'ere's famous quotation 



Five jTarrovitck fetters 

"Do women think cynical thoughts? That I cannot an- 
swer. But that they speak them I can most assuredly vouch 
for. Surely their cynicism is not altogether thoughtless! Does 
it not follow, then, that they are capable of cynicism, and if 
capable should be so pictured? 

"For remember, my dear madame, the function of the 
novelist is not to portray life as it should exist or as he might 
wish it to exist, but as it does exist. I am an uncompromising 
realist; I can follow no other canon in writing save the truth. 

"Katherine Feodorovna is a woman who has lived life to 
the full, as you doubtless have observed. She has seen the 
grim tragedy behind the smirk and pose of society. She has 
known loveless love — for such there can be — and has lived 
for appearances alone. At the time she enters "Vyvodne" she 
is a quick perceptor of fallacies in other women — she sees be- 
yond their paint and puffs, she can discern between real joy 
and false and can sense the dissembler on sight ... I like 
Katherine Feodorovna. She is one of my favorite characters. 
She is the type of woman I doubtless would have become had 
it not been the will of an all-knowing Providence to make me 
a man." 

Turning now from the "literary" type of letter, we 
have a descriptive note in the next. It was written to a 
friend in St. Petersburg who had asked Larrovitch what 
he remembered of the first Siberian village where he be- 
gan his exile term. Only a portion of this letter can be 
given. Note that Larrovitch wrote this almost fifty 
years after he left Baikalskaia. 

"... In winter a leper land, an outcast land; in summer it 
is a busy valley between abundant hills. But winter or sum- 
mer, life there was fast and furious and free. Champagne — 
men made rich in the hinterland gold fields or the illicit vodka 
traffic with the Chinese across the border fifty versts south- 
ward — brodjai* — one or two French demimondaines — wild 
Cossack officers and their wilder commands — these colored 

* Escaped criminal exiles who went about robbing the countryside. To this 
day the brodjai are a serious menace in Transbaikalia. 

C71] 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

the half-Russian, half-Oriental life of the town. 

"A narrow strip of log houses and shops, Baikalskaia 
sprawled a mile length along the low banks of the great inland 
sea. To the north of the town stood a flour mill and many bar- 
racks and army store sheds. There was one school house and 
a church, a Chinese bazaar and an omnipresence of mud and 
dust. 

"In winter the wicked clotted there and the troops were 
ordered back to town. There was room for 5,000 troops, all 
Cossacks, who every night and morning loudly proclaimed — 
to our disgust and discomfort — that their souls were God's 
and their bodies the Tsar's. The latter I never questioned, 
but, from what I saw of these fellows, I did not envy God his 
enforced possession. 

"Mid-October used to see the first ice crusting the water. 
The hills would turn red and gold, and then dun. Here and 
there the white nakedness of a silver birch that looked in the 
moonlight like an unsheathed sword. By November camel 
caravans would cross the frozen Baikal coming north from 
out Mongolia way with loads of tea and marmot skins. 

"In Baikalskaia I lived the first two years of my exile. The 
second spring I was transferred to Irkutsk . . . But I shall not 
bore you with telling of Irkutsk." 

The next letter was written shortly before Larrovitch's 
death and was in answer to a correspondent who had 
attacked the Church. It evidences the scholarship and 
deep thought for which Larrovitch was famous, and has 
indications of his return to the Orthodox viewpoint. 
Dear Ivan Adler: 

'T cannot agree with you. Perhaps at one time in my life I 
would have concurred with your conclusions, but now, after 
these many years, these many wanderings, I have come to 
look on the matter in a different light. I believe our greatest 
heroes in Russia are our soldiers and our saints, and of the 
two the saint is the nobler. 

"The spiritual leader is the unseen Captain of State. Al- 
ways his figure emerges after the smoke of battle and the 
clouded hate of men have drifted away. 

[7O 



Five JTarroviich betters 

"The vigor and immortality of a saint lies in the fact that 
he epitomizes the maximum strength of a people's moral 
courage. If you would understand the calibre of a nation's 
moral courage, my dear Adler, and trace its spiritual develop- 
ment — its fierce encounters, its tedious march to the light, 
its heights and its depths — you must understand its saints. 

"St. Francis of Assisi marked a definite stage in the de- 
velopment of the Italian genus. His influence has penetrated 
clear through generations. In the same measure have the 
spirits of St. Louis and Joan of Arc marked high tides in the 
French soul. Did I not hear folk speak of them constantly 
when I was in France? And why? Why the immortality of 
these men and women? Because the saint typifies that which 
none other can — the spirit of courage, the spirit of long en- 
durance. 

"Now what their saints are to the Italian and French and 
Briton and Teuton, so are they to us. Only to us they are 
even more, for our saints are the very rock on which our vast 
empire and its future are based. 

"Do not think this the cryptic saying of an old man. Let 
me explain. 

"We Russians have many saints, for it is given to us es- 
pecially (I say this in all humility) to recognize, when we see 
them, those who may enter in through the gates into the City. 
To be sure, their vogue rises and falls, some are forgotten, 
some revived. Those who survive the vagaries of Time — 
mark this! — are the men who helped shape Russian destinies 
by moulding our national soul into something entirely differ- 
ent from that of any other people. They have invariably been 
of two classes — soldiers or monks: men of the type of Alex- 
ander Nevski who stemmed the tide of the great invasion and 
with rare diplomacy turned Tatar vassalage into Muscovite 
independence, or men such as the monk Sergius who, a cen- 
tury later, labored to revitalize the national soul into a spirit 
strong, noble, and abiding. 

"In any nation the standard of a people's moral force is 
more truly reflected in the lives of its saints than its warriors. 
The warrior leader often disregards moral law when the grim 
necessities of war assert themselves. In the saint is crystal- 

[73} 



Feodor \)ladimir £arrovitch 

lized that spiritual force which is the very foundation of law 
and political structure. The expedient standard of the war- 
rior may "work," as we use the term, but the idealistic stand- 
ard of the saint endures. 

"But mark this one great fact — the warrior who has saved 
a nation soon ceases to be a warrior and becomes a saint, his 
helmet takes on the adumbration of a halo. He becomes a 
saviour of our Russian soul — our national soul, just as the 
religious saved our spiritual genus." 

It is fitting that the last letter in our selection should 
be to a child, for Larrovitch was fond of children and 
whenever one crept into a novel he always seemed to 
have so much fun playing with him. This letter was to 
the little son of an obscure ispravnik or local police chief, 
in Ufa who had sent Larrovitch a box made of plaited 
birch bark, in return for which Larrovitch sent him a 
toy sword made of Circassian walnut. 

"What do you think happened to me today, Mikail Ivano- 
vitch? 

"I was walking through a wood where the trees were very 
thick and tall, and I heard a voice behind me, calling and 
calling. 

"Who called me? I shouted. 

"At first I did not hear a sound. 

"Then, from the hollow of a tree stepped out a fairy. He 
was a very beautiful fairy, with green and blue boots and a 
bright red shirt and a yellow cap on his head. 

"Well, young man I asked him. What can I do for you? 

"Please, sir, said he, I know of a little boy and the little 
boy's name is Mikail Ivanovitch and the little boy lives in 
Ufa, and this little boy, sir, wants more than anything else to 
have a . . . And with that he climbed up on my shoulder and 
whispered in my ear. 

"Now wasn't that funny, Mikail Ivanovitch? Wasn't it 
funny that just at the same time I was walking in the wood 
and met that fairy, you were thinking of me and sending me 
the beautiful box of plaited birch bark! And while you were 

[74] 



Five JTarrovitch JTetters 

sending me the box, I was down in a shop buying you this 
very thing the fairy told me you wanted so much! 

"Give your Mamma and Papa each a kiss for me and re- 
member always your loving friend,'' 

Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, 

Thomas Walsh 



[75} 



THE TRUE AND THE FALSE ABOUT 

J^rrovitch 

-o^RICHARDSON WRIGHT 



IJUT I am not quite sure that I understand wo- 
men," remarked Andrew. "When you do, my 
lad," said his father, "you will know entirely too 
much to associate with ordinary mortals. After 
women, the, stars. ' ' 

From "Vyvodne." 



[ The scene*" is the drawing room in the palace of the 
governor general of Perm. A Louis XVI. room, with a 
superfluity of gilt. Tea has been served and the two women 
fall to talking. The one is Katherine Feodorovna, a dowager 
of the upper '50' j, socially prominent and confidant to cer- 
tain of the younger women. The other is Tatiana Verovna, 
the young wife of the Governor-General. His Excellency is 
much older than Tatiana, which, in the conversation that 
preceded, has been quoted by her as justification for a mild 
indiscretion committed one evening a week previous with a 
certain dashing captain of a landers regiment in barracks 
at Perm, gossip of which appears to have filtered through 
the town.'] 

"1 REALLY do not think it matters what Nina is say- 
ing," remarked Katherine Feodorovna. 

"If it were only Nina I would not worry," replied 
Tatiana Verovna. "Nina? Pooh! But its everyone else.' 
Oh, I can tell. The butcher, the baker, the wine mer- 
chant, Mensikoff, Baratkin and all the rest seem to 
know about it." 

"But do you permit that to worry you, what the 
small trades-people think and the Mensikoffs and the 
Baratkins? Baratkin's wife was always a gossip any- 
how." The older woman looked over at Titiana Verovna 
who was sitting dejectly on the edge of the couch across 
the room with that imperious scorn which alone is bred 
of hard contact with a merciless world. "Listen to me, 
child. I speak from fifty years of good report and evil 
report. Once you lay yourself open to criticism, once 
your name is connected with a scandal or even a 
romance, the world and his wife thenceforth considers 
your life public property and your reputation is what 

*This scene is in chapter 21 of "Dvornik." I give these few introductory 
notes so that the reader can catch the drift of the dialogue. 

C79] 



Feodor Uladimir £arrovitch 

they care to make it. You must pay that price for being 
the wife of the governor-general. Had you married a 
nonentity no one would mention your name! Oh dear! 
I have lived through so much talk, and survived it all, 
fortunately, that I laugh at your little problems." 
Katherine Feodorovna leaned forward in her chair. 
"Now be honest with me, child. Which would you 
rather be: a nonentity and not talked about, or a pub- 
lic social figure and the topic of gossip for every tongue- 
wagger in the province?" 

Tatiana Verovna smiled through her tears. 

"Because you must make the choice," Katherine Feo- 
dorovna continued. "They'll talk about you whether it 
is the cut of your gown or your choice in amours." 

"But I did nothing wrong," protested Tatiana Ve- 
rovna. 

"That's just the paradox of gossip," replied Katherine 
Feodorovna. "If you sin, you might just as well shatter 
the entire ten commandments, because the public will 
do it for you anyhow." 

1 HERE is almost a note of cynicism in this scene, 
and I am not sure but that Larrovitch was very much in 
earnest when he wrote it. Like many another man in the 
public eye he suffered the gossip of scandal-mongers. 
Motives of the utmost purity were twisted about for 
public delectation, and the various occasions when, un- 
willingly and unwittingly often, his life impinged on ro- 
mance and adventure, he was made to bear the major 
share of the blame. Granted that all novels are, to a 
greater or less degree, autobiographical, we can assume 
that in the scene quoted above Larrovitch was merely 
putting on the lips of Katherine Feodorovna his own 

[80} 







^ ft. 



ft, '^ 
"^ I 



The True and the False ^About JTarrovitch 

sentiments regarding what the people thought of him. 
For although he smarted under the criticism of his work, 
he had an undisguised weakness for otherwise being the 
topic of conversation. This weakness led to many false 
thmgs bemg said of him and many true. I am endeavor- 
mg here to put each in its proper category. 

Shortly after he was exiled to Siberia, as is well known, 
Larrovitch's wife eloped with a young French lieuten- 
ant. This is the fact: Larrovitch never saw her again. 
But witness how gossip garbles the story, how it makes 
out of the whole cloth a tale which never was played by 
either Larrovitch or his wife! How does it run? Thus- 
One night, in the summer of 1866, when Larrovitch was 
in Pans he stopped to rest for a few moments on a bench 
in the Bois. In the act of lighting a cigarette, the glow 
from It lighted up the face of a woman on the other end 
of the bench. It was the runaway wife, now an outcast, 
one of the commercially amorous of that great city 
"where joy is trafficked in." 

The absurdity of this story is readily appreciated when 
we recall that Lanatiere unearthed the record of her bur- 
ial in November, 1846, a little over a year after her 
elopement. He says: 

"Cest dans un petit cimetiere obscur et presqu' inconnu^ 
aux Batignolles, quefai decouvert sa tombe, parmi d' autre) 
de ses compatries decedes a Paris. Elle etait surmontee de 
la croix Grecque a trois bras, et inscrite, en charactkres 
Russes: 

Ci-GiT 

SONIA SiROTOVNA LaRROVITCH 

Nee a Odesse, le 20 Janvier, 1820. 
^^ Morte a Paris, le 10 Novembre, 1846. 
"Dans une vie breve, elle accomplit merveilles.'' 

[81} 



Feodor Vladimir cCarrovitch 

Footprints of the exiles are to be found all over Si- 
beria. Due to the devoted labor of scholarly men who 
have been sent there during the last 400 years, this great 
Asiatic province owes some of its remarkable develop- 
ment. So it has come about that one finds the name of 
Larrovitch connected with the beginnings of the Alex- 
androff Museum at Irkutsk. He is reputed to have been 
one of a band of intellectuals in exile there who started 
the collection of geological and ethnological specimens 
for which that museum is locally famous. 

In Irkutsk they also tell of Larrovitch being a mem- 
ber of a local volunteer fire brigade. This is plausible 
enough, for shortly before Larrovitch reached Irkutsk 
the city was visited by a devastating fire that wiped out 
most of the buildings along the Bolshaia. The portrait 
showing him as a young man is taken from a group of 
that fire company painted at the time by an artist also 
in exile. 

It was characteristic of Larrovitch that he should take 
such a lively interest in community affairs. If further 
substantiation is desired, one can find it reflected in the 
tale, "The Witless Leader" in "Crasny Baba," in which 
the fire chief runs his water wagons to the river, fills 
them up, and rumbles back to the fire only to find the 
water all gone: he had forgotten to place the corks in the 
bung holes! 

The combination of exile and desertion hardened Lar- 
rovitch for a time, but it was only a callus that protected 
a warm and kindly heart. Today Russians in speaking 
of him will offset tales of his excesses by quoting stories 
of his generosity. He was very fond of children. There 
are many child characters in his books, notably little 
Serge Ivanovitchy the concierge's son in "Barin! Barin!" 

[82] 



The True and the False zAbout J^rrovitch 

And was it not a child, the curly-locked Daria, who moved 
the unruly mob to repentance in "Gospodi Pomi?" 

Larrovitch was also very fond of animals, dogs espe- 
cially. This is not to be wondered at, for it is among the 
paradoxes of Russia that the same government which 
wielded the knout forbade trained animal shows because 
they necessitated cruelty to the animals! The fondness 
is also reflected in the various stories. There was Chorf^, 
the half- wolf cur dog of the old peasant Gutsitin in "Ivan 
Soronko," and the faithful borzoi in "Swept and Gar- 
nished," likewise the vivid scene in "Vyvodne" in which 
Sonia and Ivan hunt rabbits with dachshunds, a favorite 
sport to this day in some parts of Russia. 

As we are here concerned with the weakness of Larro- 
vitch as well as his masterful characteristics, we are 
obliged to consider two more types of tales about him: 
his drinking and his superstitions. 

_ In his paper, Dr. Coan has already touched on Larro- 
vitch's occasional recourse to crystal gazing. By birth 
and breeding a man of questioning turn of mind, Larro- 
vitch ran the gamut of faiths and infatuations. If at 
times he did not appear to believe in God, it was because 
he was believing in something else. He can never be ac- 
cused of sterile agnosticism. He had a flaire for astrol- 
ogy at one time, at another he investigated spiritualism, ■ 
at still another he tried his hand at mysticism, which 
failed him for the simple reason that mysticism is some- 
thing one cannot experiment with or dabble in. "All 
mystics speak the same language" said the saint, "for 
all come from the same country." Larrovitch was not 

*The nearest equivalent in the Muscovite parlance to our everyday "damn." 
Chort Vasmi can be roughly translated, "The Devil take it!" As shown by 
this, Larrovitch had an unquenchable sense of humor. 

[83} 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

from that land, and hence the tongue of the mystics was 
unintelligible to him. 

In his last years he made concessions to Orthodoxy, 
as can be seen in his final novel "Gospodi Pomi," and I 
believe that he died in the odor of ecclesiasticism, re- 
ceiving at the end the ministrations of a priest. He was 
buried by the Church, and over his grave shines the 
three-armed cross of Orthodoxy. 

Do not think it an anti-climax that I choose as the 
final topic Larrovitch and Bacchus. One of the worst 
things that can befall an author after his death is to be 
deified. Robert Louis Stevenson has been robbed of all 
manhood and virility by being made out a little literary 
god. Stevenson was a very human chap with very hu- 
man weaknesses. So was Larrovitch. He was a four- 
squared man, an athlete, a man who did not live by 
halves. Life poured out for him a full cup — and he 
drank it to the very lees. 

What does it mean to us, after these many years, that 
Lanatiere saved him from freezing to death when he 
found him one bitterly cold night in a stupor on the Rue 
de Rivoli after a protracted drinking bout? 

Does it make us think any the less of the man that 
he drank his carafe of vodka every night before dinner, 
or that he had a passion for the fine wines of the Crimea, 
or that he was wont to disappear for a fortnight to fight 
out the game with life over the cups? 

There are things in Larrovitch's career which prove 
fat carrion for ghoulish pens to batten on. There are 
men who speak of him as though to say "Here's a good 
yarn about Larrovitch. If it isn't true it ought to be." 
On the other hand I am not endeavoring to pose as an 
apologist and set up the image of a plaster saint for you 

[84] 



The True and the False <^bout cCarrovitch 

to think of as Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch. Never! The 
good and the evil were mingled in him. He was neither 
viciously bad nor insufferably virtuous. 

Richardson Wright 



[85} 



TALKS WITH 

J^rrovitch 

-»?TITUS MUNSON COAN 



1 AM a Slavophile because I believe in the ulti- 
mate destiny of my country." General Shertovitch 
drew himself up to his full height and glared over 
at Bachmann. 

"No. You fear us. That's why you're a Slav- 
ophile." 

'♦All right, put it that way, if you will. No fate 
more terrible can befall a nation than that it become 
saturated with your damnable materialism. And 
let me tell you, Bachmann, the day will come when 
the entire world shall revolt against it. You may 
set up your Teuton god in every corner of the uni- 
verse, but you will never be able to make the people 
worship it." 

From "GosPODi Pomi." 



Y ES, I knew him well; and how vivid, after these fifty 
years, are my recollections! Not only of his words but of 
his voice, his smile, the flash of his eye, his gestures, as 
he spoke. Mine is not the skill of an Eckermann, a Lock- 
hart, a Boswell; but if I can give any adequate impres- 
sion of that great personality I shall be content. 

It was at Paris in 1867 that I met the man who was to 
count for so much in my intellectual life. I saw him fre- 
quently; sometimes at the Russian Embassy, sometimes 
at the home of the United States Minister to France, 
Larrovitch's exact contemporary. Never was warmer 
welcome than that of this urbane and distinguished 
American to the intellectuals of whatever land. Among 
our countrymen who frequented his salon were Robert 
Dale Owen, Moncure Conway, Freeman Clarke of Bos- 
ton, O. B. Frothingham, Edward E. Hale and others of 
the advanced Unitarian cult. Dr. Evans occasionally 
bustled in — Evans, the friend and confidant of royalty, 
the most famous dentist in Europe. "More crowned 
heads have opened their mouths to me," he used to say, 
"than to anyone else in Christendom." 

The younger men were often to be seen at these re- 
ceptions; well do I remember Clarence King, the ge- 
ologist, most brilliant of talkers, and the lamented 
Hooper, both of the highest promise. Was I, too, a youth 
of promise? Presumably; how else could I have won 
Larrovitch's friendship — I may almost say his intimacy? 
There was no resisting his charm. Neither his political 
nor his domestic trials — and they were as bitter as those 
of Socrates — had soured him. Like Emerson and other 
sages he welcomed the friendship of young men; they 
would hand down his personal tradition. His talk was 
enthralling, and whether I believed or doubted, I was 
an eager listener. His thoughts, his emotions were tides 
that lifted you, yet did not submerge. My surrender to 

[89} 



Feodor "Vladimir JTarrovitch 

him was immediate. I could have said of him what Wie- 
land said after his first meeting with Goethe, "Since 
that day my soul has been as full of him as the dewdrop 
of the morning sun." 

Larrovitch was then in his fiftieth year. His strength 
was still unimpaired; there was no shadow of turning. 
There were great reserves of vigor in him. "If in my 
youth," he said, "I committed some excesses, they were 
not excesses for me." Yet his regime was of the golden 
mean. "Work and pleasure, religion and revelry, are 
better in moderation," he said, "and for mental sanity, 
abjure all metaphysics and all creeds." 

He was powerfully built and tall — five feet and eleven 
inches. "More than that is inconvenient; less is a dis- 
advantage." His complexion was tawny, but his eyes 
were sparkling blue. When I knew him he wore his hair 
long; his features were square cut and strongly marked, 
and in his serious moods they reminded one of Albrecht 
Durer's portrait of himself. The tips of his ears were 
slightly folded downwards — a reversion to the type of 
some faunal or other prick-eared ancestor. I never saw 
another instance of Darwin's tubercle, but it is not in- 
frequent. Tinnitus, in his monograph on "the Domestic 
Uses of the Megaphone," mentions its occurrence among 
his own children, perhaps as a protective device. The 
only portrait that shows the crumpled ear is the masterly 
sketch by Chalkoff now in the Musee Roumiantzeff. 
There is a fairly good portrait in the tope of Prince 
Nogo at Nagasaki, but it is not seen save by his friends 
and now and then a foreign guest; for the Prince keeps 
to the exclusive ways of the old regime; like Papegaut 
in Rabelais, "il par nature est a veoir un peu difficile." 
Mr. Wright, himself a Russian scholar and traveler and 

[90] 



Talks with jTarrovitch 

student of Larrovitch's career, has come upon several 
engraved likenesses, so called, of the great man in his 
declining years. They are interesting but they are mis- 
leading; the form is there but the light has gone. Unless 
further search should be successful, Larrovitch must 
share the mischance of Columbus and Shakespere, of 
whom we have no convincing portraits. 

But what need of portrait or semblance have I, who 
had the intimacy of his features? There needs no crys- 
tal ball or magic mirror to renew the vision; that noble 
countenance rises before me as I write. 

It was in the year of the great Exposition, during July 
and August; I was much in his company. We strolled 
in Fontainebleau forest, we drove in the Bois, we met at 
the Louvre and at the Embassy. Sometimes we boarded 
the bateau mouche and went down stream to the farthest 
landing-place, returning late at night; then homeward 
bound through the Place Vendome and the Rue Rivoli, 
rapt in talk, we would pass unawares by his hotel, the 
Meurice; returning, we would pass and repass again, 
like a ship oversailing her anchorage or a spent pendu- 
lum coming to rest. So in other years and with other 
philosophers I have gone astray; sometimes in New York 
City with Moncure Conway of beloved memory — Con- 
way, pilgrim to the farthest East, who, returning, brought 
back something of the Indian magic in his scrip. Or 
perhaps one watch of the night was held with Stephen 
Pearl Andrews, the self-styled "Pantarch," master of 
philosophies and himself author of an elaborate system 
which was to include and harmonize all others: "Uni- 
versology," he called it. Universology was to explain 
all things and reconcile all contradictions, even those 
between organic chemistry and the doctrine of tran- 

[91] 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

substantiation. He was well equipped, his talk was elo- 
quent and very discursive — de omnibus rebus et quibus- 
dam aliis. But I wander. 

To return to Larrovitch: the story of his first love was 
the last confidence he gave me. Shortly before we part- 
ed he spoke briefly of it, and as it seemed to me with 
a certain reluctance, almost with timidity, as if fearing 
that I might not feel the beauty of the experience. As 
with Goethe and many another lad, the awakening came 
to him at the age of fourteen, the beloved one being 
three years older. Abila Baldinoff was a visitor at Kiev; 
a delicate blonde with a Greek profile, the eldest daugh- 
ter of a Courland pastor — a girl of quiet ways, and not a 
coquette; but she had musical talent, she sang Russian 
folk songs well and she was beautiful. It was love at 
first sight, and for Larrovitch the stars and the sunrising. 
"For me," he said, "the new emotion was more than a 
rapture, it was a wonder and a wild surprise. I could 
not understand it. Had other people felt the same? I 
had never dreamed of anything like it; it was a new life. 
I did not know a line of Dante, but I followed the foot- 
ing of his feet. Least of all could I have guessed at this 
radiant experience from what I saw around me. How 
weary were the husbands' faces, and how grave the 
wives'! Everywhere the sombre domestic countenance; 
I took it as a matter of course that sadness was the 
natural lot of marriage. Whence came the great joy 
that had befallen me.^* 

"I was still very innocent in thought and feeling — 
not indeed wholly ignorant, but when sex-feeling arose 
I tried to repress it — not always successfully. I thought 
it degrading: it did not seem to have any kinship with 
my transfiguring emotion. It was a mystery; who could 

C92] 







The grave of Larrovitch. A small shrine has been erected over 
his grave stone. The stone itself forms part of the flooring of 
this shrine. Above it is suspended a lamp which the monks 
in a nearby monastery keep constantly burning 



Talks with JTarrovitch 

explain it? I never said a word of love to Abila, but she 
must have known. My beatitude was not for long. 
Abila returned to her home. I saw her but once again 
and that very briefly; but for a full year the thought of 
her was never absent during my waking hours, and to- 
day I have no dearer remembrance." 

Then came his college days. Larrovitch liked to speak 
of them. The delicate boy was now a sturdy youth. "At 
the University of Kiev," he said, *T gave some part of 
my time to the prescribed studies, enough to stand fairly 
well in my classes; but this was by way of concession, 
for my chief pleasure was in athletics and military ex- 
ercises. In these I won some distinction, and it seems 
that the tradition lingers. Read this . . .", and he gave 
me a copy of the London Times, just in by mail. 

I took the paper and read as follows: "Our old readers 
will remember Larrovitch of Kiev, now Count Larro- 
vitch, poet, novelist and diplomat, who after some years 
of travel in Europe has recently come to Paris upon an 
important mission. We reprint an account of his stu- 
dent life as given some years ago by our Russian corres- 
pondent. 

"'Young Larrovitch is just now the most admired 
figure in our college life; not so much for his scholarship 
as for his astonishing proficiency in athletics and virile 
exercises. He carries everything before him. He prac- 
tised wrestling with Stranene and Pushkin, a sturdy 
son of the poet; in pugilism his teacher was BeanofF, 
once Master ofjanissaries to the Sublime Porte. From 
ScrufFsky and Shindekoff he learned the last refinements 
of the jujutsu, until then too little known in Russia — 
the strangle-hold, the head-lock, the squealing grip and 
the cross-buttock. He studied the broadsword with 

[93] 



Feodor Vladimir JTarrovitck 

Hedzoff and attained great skill; there was no parrying 
his tierce. 'I shall avoid having any quarrel with you,' 
said Hedzoff after the fourth lesson. In a word, Larro- 
vitch is the pride of the University. We shall hear more 
of this formidable young man.' " 

I returned the journal to Larrovitch. "That was be- 
fore the era of boxing," he said. "Yes, those were great 
days and famous masters. They did not want to give 
me up, for I was of the best promise. One day Beanoff 
said, not without deference, 'Permit me to advise you. 
What is the good of all your books? Pray leave off 
those useless studies. They bring you nowhere. Let me 
give you six months of hard training and I will make you 
the champion heavyweight of Western Russia.' I was 
flattered; here was a career! But I had to decline. My 
fighting was to be done with tongue and pen." 

And for this Larrovitch was well equipped. He had 
what in a Russian is no unusual accomplishment, a 
working knowledge of five modern languages. The chap- 
ter of physical culture came to an end with Larrovitch's 
college days, but mentally, as well as physically, he was 
now an athlete prepared to face the world. 

And now the fuller tides were rising. In 1840 came 
the episode of Vera Katinka, the beautiful Circassian, 
the story so admirably told in "Crasny Baba." "The 
critics called it romance," he said. "Well, I put masks 
on some of my people; but I did not have to invent 
them." In private circles the fact of that liaison was 
well known, and for the privileged ones it was the sen- 
sation of the day. But the story did not get into print; 
the biographers make no record of it. What caused the 
suppression ? It was due to political and social influence; 
for Vera Katinka belonged to a family of high position, 

[94] 



'Talks with farrovitch 

and Larrovitch was already showing a strong hand in 
the game of politics. But the Russian censorship, then 
as under the last imperial regime, while it was very strict 
as regarded political affairs, did not gravely concern it- 
self with the proprieties. "One's amours," said Larro- 
vitch, "are more interesting than one's marriages; and 
we Russians write with great freedom on matters of sex. 
For all our faults, and they are many, we are no Phari- 
sees; in plain speaking we are brothers of the French. 
But it is they that suffer the penalties of frankness, for 
everybody reads French novels, and to foreigners gen- 
erally the naughtiest are the most welcome; more per- 
haps to the Englishman than to others, for they are 
pleasures under the ban. He reads with delight, he 
closes the book with reluctance. But now his spiritual 
ballast has shifted; he finds himself troubled, an official 
wrinkle gathers on his brow. He recalls himself, snatches 
up a pen and writes to The Times announcing the deca- 
dence of the Latin races, and wondering how a French- 
man ever came to found the Montyon prize for virtue." 
There are communities without religion, but there 
are none without scandals, even among the elect; and in 
the Hterary circles of London Larrovitch had heard one 
that was unknown as yet to the public and was to re- 
main unknown for yet many years, but to be disclosed 
at last as one of the greatest surprises in biography — 
the early love-affair of William Wordsworth and Ann- 
ette Vallon. "A very interesting amour," said he; "and 
quite characteristic. Wordsworth's passions were as 
strong as those of any other young poet or prosateur. 
His readers and critics thought him cold; they could not 
have been more completely mistaken. Wordsworth 
misled them by his purposed avoidance of amatory 

C95} 



Feodor %)ladimir JTarrovitch 

themes; he tells us that if he had used them, he would 
have been tempted to write with too much warmth. 
This youthful amour gave him warning. What a for- 
tunate thing that it has been kept out of print! It would 
never do to scandalize the British public — the public 
that to this day has found no niche in Westminster Ab- 
bey for the name of Byron." He paused, then said: 
"However, we need not blame the British too severely; 
so they are born and bred. Tout comprendre cest tout 
pardonnery 

Larrovitch spoke often of the famous men and women 
he had met; but his favorite themes were those of re- 
search and travel and American affairs, for he had come 
to know our country well. In his earlier writings, as Mr. 
Sykes has shown so clearly, his trend was toward meta- 
physical studies, but in later years he came over to the 
camp of science; like William Godwin, he "left off his 
first opinions with his youth." He rejected the old on- 
tologies; he put Kant and Hegel on the shelf; he would 
not discuss final causes or the Ding an sich. "All those 
questions," he said, "are forever beyond the reach of 
our faculties; we can never understand the ultimate con- 
stitution of things. As well try to make the moon's 
libration comprehensible to a chanting tomcat." 

But Larrovitch knew to its limits the domain of valid 
speculative thought. Space he considered as relative, 
not absolute; matter, whatever it may be, as infinitely 
divisible. He was at home with the molecule, but he 
denied the atom. "The word contradicts itself," he 
would say; "you cannot conceive of anything so small 
as not to be further divisible. We must admit infinite 
minitude as well as magnitude. But why is it harder to 
conceive the infinitely small than the infinitely great.'' 

[96} 



T'alks with J^arrovitch 

I have not seen the question answered. Is it not because 
the subdivision to infinity is imagined as existing within 
a finite space?" 

Metaphysics, once his favorite domain, at last fell 
entirely out of favor with our philosopher; he came to 
call it "the phantom science." He knew all the meta- 
physicians from Plato to Fichte, he had even read Schel- 
ling's great work on the Inconceivable; at Jena he had 
followed the courses of Krakowitz, Nebelskopf, and 
Mistichenko, the favorite pupil of Hegel, "the one man 
that understood him." But he turned away from all of 
them. "Their doctrines are futile," he said. "They 
have no foundation in observed fact. I never could de- 
termine which one of those teachers builded on the 
cloudiest corner-stone. Your Categories, your Eternal 
Forms, your Innate Ideas, your Insight of Reason, all 
are fatuous — yes, worse than fatuous, they are mislead- 
ing; they are marsh-lights. Why, one of your American 
philosophers has put it all in a definition;" and he quoted 
from Stallo's "Modern Physics:" 

"Metaphysical thinking is an attempt to deduce the 
true nature of things from our concepts of them . . . mere 
figments of the intellect . . . The metaphysical malady 
seems to be one of the unavoidable disorders of intellec- 
tual infancy." Larrovitch added: "Don't confound psy- 
chology with metaphysics, as some of your American 
writers do." 

I am sure I need not ask pardon for touching on the 
scientific phases of Larrovitch's development. Like 
Goethe, he was great both as a thinker and a poet; in 
him there was no conflict between the emotional and 
the intellectual domains. He came to take the most ad- 
vanced views in biological science; his novels indeed are 

[97} 



Feodor Vladimir JTarrovitch 

studies in psychology, made in the hght of the then re- 
cent discoveries of brain-functions. He denied the exist- 
ence of "mind" except as a function of "matter." "Why 
attempt to distinguish between the two," he would say, 
"in view of our present knowledge? Why, it is but yes- 
terday, and here in Paris, that Paul Broca showed that 
the power of speech resides in a certain limited region of 
the gray matter of the brain. When that is injured or 
destroyed the corresponding faculty of 'mind' goes with 
it. Now at last we know what has long been suspected — 
that thought is a secretion of the brain. Nor until now 
has any philosopher, however great his genius, had any 
right to an opinion on the nature of 'mind;' for nobody 
heretofore, from Aristotle to Victor Cousin, has had the 
proven data for an opinion. I call Broca the greatest 
discoverer since Newton. And this is but the beginning." 

What would Larrovitch have said if he could have 
foreseen the localization of each mental faculty in a 
definite region of the brain, and the consequent denial 
by science of mind or soul as a separate entity.^ But we 
must not linger on these matters of research. I mention 
them as showing the range of that intellect as yet too 
little understood by those who have known Larrovitch 
only as novelist or poet. He was a dreamer, as we have 
seen; and a scientific discovery may begin as with a 
dream ; but his sense for the fact put him on guard against 
visionary philosophies of any kind. 

One evening at his rooms, after discoursing on Hegel's 
idealism, he spoke of New England. "I read Emerson, I 
tried to read Alcott, whom Emerson called the greatest 
thinker since Plato. Alcott was the most amiable of men, 
but his countenance made me think of the full moon in 
a faint haze. I was interested, elevated, edified — but not 

[98] 



Talks with JTarrovitc/i 

instructed. These men had fine feeling, but not the faint- 
est glimmer of science. What need had they of it.? They 
had intuitions, 'intimations.' Your trancendentalist is 
a poet who mistakes himself for a philospher. His very 
existence is in figures of speech; for him a fine meta- 
phor is a revelation, a new trope eternal truth. He closes 
his 'Phaedo,' he emerges from the closet, his face shines; 
now for the great disclosure! But no, a beautiful phrase 
is all he brings you. 

"Do not linger long in that domain; it is a fair walled 
garden, and its walks are pleasant, but they are over- 
blown with poppies, and it will be hard for you to find 
the sally-port ... It is a relaxing philosophy; it weakens 
the will to be and to do. It may be well to hitch your 
wagon to a star, but what transcendentalist ever dis- 
covered a planet, or wrote a great poem? For women 
too these stellar ideals have their danger. Where shall 
the dreaming maiden find the heroic partner? Not in 
Plymouth or in Podunk; nowhere nearer, perhaps than 
on the far side of the moon. Ralph Waldo Emerson's 
writings have reduced the birthrate in New England." 
Larrovitch's scientific studies had not impaired his 
poetic temperament, for however one's career may 
chance to be developed, one's original temperament is a 
thing which does not change. But those studies had 
spoiled his earlier faith. He had come well through the 
"theological" and "metaphysical" stages of Comte and 
now he had small tolerance for the mystic and the so- 
called supranatural. He said to me one evening, "I am 
clean done with all that — from the Delphic oracles to 
the rappings and tappings and 'controls' of today's 
spiritualism. I have one formula for it all — nine-tenths 
fraud and one-tenth hypnotism. If I could find any 

C99} 



Feodor Vladimir jTarrovitc/i 

clear proof in its favor, it would be an intellectual ex- 
citement of the first order, and as such very welcome. 
But proof is not as yet, and meanwhile all that science 
has to say is flat against it." 

"But," said I, "there are eminent men of science to- 
day who believe in spiritualism." 

"Precisely, and just so did the wise men of the East, 
every soul of them, believe that the sun went round the 
earth; and just so today there are men, otherwise in- 
telligent, who believe that the earth is flat. There is al- 
ways a minority report on creation." 

For all his science, however, Larrovitch had some 
foibles that seemed second-cousin to superstition. He 
liked to see the new moon over the right shoulder; he 
tapped on wood occasionally, and from time to time he 
indulged in crystal-gazing. Did the scrying sphere stand 
for him as an icon } I never knew, I could not venture to 
ask him; but some residual traits of his Tatar ancestry 
lingered in him; and his foibles, if foibles they were, were 
almost endearing; for Larrovitch was not always too 
wise or good, as some other great men have been or 
seemed to be; and now for the first time his tempera- 
mental love of beauty, repressed during his early days 
of hardship, had found its opportunity. Thanks to the 
brilliant fortunes of his later years, every luxury was 
now at his command. To some extent, however, his 
tastes in art remained Oriental; he liked the Byzantine 
painters, he cared little for Gothic architecture; for him, 
art had blown her perfect bubbles in the painted domes 
of Moscow. 

Larrovitch was the last of men to make any parade of 
fortune; but in one matter he had indulged his caprice 
to such an extreme that a true account of it may seem 

[ 100} 



'Talks with JTarrovitch 

fantastic. I describe what I saw. Larrovitch's crystal 
sphere stood in a bay window opening eastward upon a 
walled garden. It was locked up in a glazed cabinet of 
Indian sandalwood, of which the side panels bore em- 
bossed inscriptions from the Sanhita Veda, with figures 
carved by a native sculptor of Coromandel. The sphere 
itself was of unbelievable size, the largest ever mined in 
the Bernese Oberland, and of the purest water; so lim- 
pid was the great crystal that you looked for it to dissolve 
and flow; but no — it shone steadily and with a soft light, 
as of Saturn within his rings. Three years' labor by 
an old craftsman of the Bungelhorn had wrought it into 
perfect roundness; and it was mounted in a flat hoop 
of Ceylon ebony enforced with ribs of hammered gold. 
I have made a study of divination-spheres, I have gazed 
into many; this was much the largest and finest of all.* 
How frequently Larrovitch used the crystal sphere I 
do not know. I shall not forget the one occasion on 
which I saw him consult it. He had brought me home 
with him after a tiresome reception at the Russian Em- 
bassy; the conversation had turned upon the United 
States — their immense prosperity, their fortunate isola- 
tion, their assurance of peace with all the world. "States- 
men's patter, women's chatter," said he; "all very fool- 
ish." He was silent for a few minutes; then going to the 
sandalwood cabinet, he unlocked the door and gazed 
into the white crystal. Another silence; then he said, 'T 
see great war unloosed — raging above the clouds, and 
under the earth, and under the seas; and the air made a 
beaten highway, and human speech borne through the 
ether to the farthest planet. And what is this? Over 

*Its diameter was 30 centimetres; I made a careful measurement with the 
Munchausen callipers. 

[lOl] 



Feodor %)ladimir J^arrovitch 

your own land a great shadow, and the shining of arms 
in it — your young men going forth to battle, your maid- 
ens weeping; and divided counsels among your elders, 
and flames lighted by many traitors; and sobbing states- 
women in the halls where your laws are made ... I can 
see no more; but there is light on the far horizon." 

He closed the cabinet and came away. For a little 
time the crystal ball shone faintly — not now as within 
the golden rings of a planet, but as with the light of 
Mars. 

Our next meeting was our last. I was about returning 
to the States, and called on him to say good-bye. Once 
more he turned the talk upon our country. "You in 
America," he said, "Hke all the rest of the world, have 
still before you the great conflict, nowhere yet deter- 
mined, hardly even approaching determination, whether 
between the stronger and the weaker, the richer and the 
poorer, the majority and the minority, democracy and 
military autocracy. Nor would the triumph of either 
make for good. The majority has not the intelligence 
for choosing leaders; wastefulness, corruption and de- 
mocracy give us the tyranny of mob law. On the other 
hand military or aristocratic rule, however honest or ef- 
ficient it may be, is selfish and cruel. The ideal govern- 
ment would be that of a wise and humane minority, or 
of a single autocrat even, could the right one be found; 
but that cannot be until the majority have won more 
intelligence and the minority a much higher ethical cul- 
ture. The geological epochs arrive in time, and so will 
good government, but it will be long yet. You in the 
States took one good forward step when you abolished 
slavery. But consider your abiding race-hatreds, your 
cruel prejudices of color, your hard treatment of the 

[102] 




Some relics of Larrovitch — his shirty icon, pen, ink pot and the 
padlock from the door of his house. The shirt is a remarkable 
example of Russian embroidej'y 



Talks with jTarrovitch 

Negro — I must not dwell on this, but you know . . . 

"And how about the main traits of your civilization? 
Compare them with those of the more advanced na- 
tions. Yours is a land of opportunity, and you have 
purposed well; but distinguo: What have you accom- 
plished? Have you not given almost equal opportu- 
nity to evil and to good? For you the doctrine of 
equal rights too often means the right to do wrong. 
Consider the frequency among you of crimes of vio- 
lence, your disregard for law, the failure of your city 
governments, the corruption of your upper classes. You 
have little to learn even from us of Russia as to the 
venerable usage of bribery. Consider, too, your waste 
of national and private resources, your backward agri- 
culture, your unparalleled losses by fire, the tragedy 
of your mercantile life; why, your best authorities as- 
sure me that scarce one in twenty of your business men 
ever wins independence; at least ninety-five per cent of 
them fail, once or more than once, and die in debt or 
dependent. But again let us distinguish. Americans do 
not love the dollar any more than other men, nor do 
they chase it any more eagerly; and the world knows 
that they are among the most generous-minded and 
open-handed of people. Your real trouble, and it is a 
grave one, is that they have so little knowledge or care 
for anything but the dollar. Consider their ignorance of 
foreign peoples, languages, character, their small regard 
for scholarship; compare their intelligence, class by class, 
with that of the French, the Germans, the English. 
Among each of those peoples a score of illustrious names 
have come to the front during the Nineteenth Century; 
what is your record of intellectual achievement? I do 
not forget your pioneers and your leaders; you^too^have 

[ 103] 



Feodor %)ladimir J^rrovitch 

your roll of honor; and you have made good beginnings 
in science and art. But where is your great poet, painter, 
philosopher, builder of palaces or of symphonies? Has 
fate, or environment or the mixtures of your race, laid 
a ban upon their emergence? Look at other countries. 
England never produced a great composer, Switzerland 
never a great painter, Patagonia never a great poet; in 
their courses the stars have fought against them. The 
stars are still fighting against you. Yet nowhere is 
greater opportunity than with you. Tell your country- 
men to cultivate leisure. It is only in America that 
wealth does not bring leisure. With leisure perhaps you 
may come to high attainment. But it will be a long time 
first. I am not a pessimist, nor yet an optimist; the 
words mean no more than that you have or have not 
quarreled with the world. I am a meliorist, and look for 
better things to come, especially in the art of human 
happiness; but that can only be through eugenics and 
the finer breeding of the human race. As to finer art and 
science — they also are matters of the far future." 

But Larrovitch could not foresee that France was to 
send us the Impressionists, the Modernists, and the 
Cubists, and that the surges of Free Verse were to beat 
upon our shores. Not even in the crystal sphere was 
there any intimation that these boons were near at 
hand. He paused; his face was troubled. "This is old 
doctrine," he said; "but you are not too old to refuse it 
a hearing. Farewell; and think sometimes of your Rus- 
sian friend." He spoke with great tenderness; and I 
thought of the inscription to Voltaire at Ferney: "All 
the world knew his intellectual greatness: the greatness 
of his heart the world did not know." 

I never saw him again; nor do I think any one else in 

[ 104] 



Talks with cCarrovitch 

this country can now remember his Hving person. In 
the long course of years it has been my fortune to 
know many gifted men; but among them all Feodor 
Vladimir Larrovitch remains for me the most engaging 
and impressive figure. 

Titus Munson Coan 



[105] 



^B 



!5<^ 



TOWARD A 

J^rrovitch 

FOUNDATION 

^JAMES HOWARD BRIDGE 



JjUT the investment pays six per cent!" 

Peter Ivanovitch looked up at the banker and 
began to laugh. "Only six ? I know of an invest- 
ment that pays one hundred per cent." 

"No!" 

"Yes, one hundred per cent." 

"Well, ah — do you think . . . ?" 

"Certainly you can." 

"Yes?" Dotzin rubbed his hands gleefully. 

"Education — the education of young men. 
There's not a safer investment in the world nor 
one that pays a bigger rate of interest." 

From "DvoRNiK." 



1 HE receptivity of the American mind to new 
ideas was never so pronounced as at present. In these 
times of great national effort for the maintenance of 
a principle, something of the spiritual crops up through 
our superficialities and we quickly grasp the principles 
underlying our peculiar sociological phenomena. Never 
have these principles been so vividly described nor their 
causes so logically analyzed by any European writer, as 
by Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch. 

In the various characters of his novels he portrayed a 
mingled soul-stuff which, although Russian as he intro- 
duced it into their words and actions, is comparable only 
to the mingled spiritual tides that give life to the great 
sea of the American genus. 

Larrovitch's thesis was, in a word, simply this: that 
there is present in every creature — even the lowest — a 
spiritual element which is so vital and dynamic when 
aroused that its realism is the only one necessary for an 
author to present; that there is a realism of the spirit 
and a realism of the flesh, and the realism of the spirit 
is the only one that counts. Fleshly realism is a mere 
superficiality that can be laid aside at will, like an old 
coat. 

In European countries recognition of this great Rus- 
sian genius was tardy and only sporadic at best. Here 
adoption of his teachings was more general in the inner 
literary circles, yet few among us recognized the source 
of the inspiration. It charged the atmosphere with new 
thought, as with electric impulses proceeding from a 
wireless mechanism; but, like them, the point of origin 
was more or less unknown to us. 

During this period Larrovitch's conceptions and the- 
ories were quietly appropriated by scriveners through- 
out the world, and many authors and teachers, both 
here and abroad, entered upon intellectual careers with 

[ 109} 



Feodor %Jladimir JTarrovitch 

capital borrowed from Larrovitch. For example, the 
fierce controversy that waged around the Russian Slav- 
ophilistic theories as a medium for Russian national de- 
velopment, was concerned not so much with the theory 
itself as with the proper assignment of the credit due its 
author. Other examples of efforts made to filch from 
Larrovitch the honors which were appropriately his — 
but which in his modesty he never valued — could be 
cited. There was his dialogue between Father Sergius 
and the schoolmaster in "Barin ! Barin !" on the negative 
justification of realism, which was lifted bodily into the 
book of a Heidelberg professor. His chapter "Homo 
Sapiens" in "Dvornik" was only thinly disguised in Pro- 
fessor Schmeidler's "Elementary Psychology," pub- 
lished fifteen years after the appearance of that novel. 
And so with many other of Larrovitch's contributions 
to the psychology of character scattered through his 
various books. All of which makes it necessary that 
some actual authority be established not only to safe- 
guard Larrovitch's honor, but to preserve intact and 
unperverted the system of knowledge he has left us. 

To some it may seem well that the Larrovitch pantol- 
ogy now permeating the intellectual atmosphere and 
thrilling every point in it, should be left undisturbed 
in its all-pervasive activity. It may appear best, in lieu 
of some single focus of Larrovitchian teachings, some 
chair of Larrovitchian philosophy, that the tendency of 
the new thought to spread in ever widening circles be 
left unfettered by academic restrictions and free to ex- 
tend itself by the momentum derived from its creator. 
If there were any assurance that the Larrovitch system 
would be preserved in its pristine purity under these 
conditions, there would be obvious advantages in a 

[no] 



Toward a JTarrovitch Foundation 

multiplicity of what, in opposition to a "Larrovitch 
Chair," may be called "Larrovitch Footstools," dis- 
persed in colleges throughout the land. But we have no 
such assurance. Already heretical offshoots and schis- 
matic perversions of pantology are discoverable in some 
of our pseudo-scientific publications; and these, unless 
checked, will rapidly spread and become incorporated 
in the thought of the day. 

For this and kindred reasons, it is eminently desirable 
that the intellectual treasures bequeathed to us be safe- 
guarded by a duly accredited authority in whom devo- 
tion to Truth is equalled only by love of the master. 
Our priceless heritage of wisdom may thus be transmit- 
ted to unborn generations in all its original beauty, its 
purity and its strength. It can be, and must be kept 
free from the iconoclastic renovations to which we of 
this generation are too easily disposed. The Larrovitch- 
ian pantology is complete as it stands. It can, and must, 
remain so. 

In a recent number of the virile and versatile Popular 
Review is a symposium by various eminent writers, in 
which the suggestion occurs and recurs that a Larro- 
vitch chair be established in one of our great universi- 
ties; a tentative offer of an endowment fund having 
been made to support such a chair. This is good; but it 
is not good enough. And for this reason: there has arisen 
in recent times a clamor for what is called "academic 
freedom." It is demanded that the occupant of a pro- 
fessorial position be free to interpret, according to his 
personal vagaries and idiosyncrasies, the tenets he has 
been appointed to transmit, untainted by prejudice or 
personal bias, to his scholars. This so-called "academic 
freedom" may not be encroached upon even by the trus- 

[iii] 



Feodor Vladimir J^rrovitch 

tees who originally made the appointment under a con- 
tract, mutually made and accepted, that the teaching 
given was to be only of the quality and kind agreed 
upon. To vest in any professor the right to misinterpret 
Larrovitch at will, and to hold this right for life — to per- 
vert his doctrines, invert his arguments, jumble his facts 
— and this against the protests of all Larrovitchians, 
even against those of the very men who have contributed 
the fund supporting the heretical teacher, is an absurdity 
that no claim for "academic freedom" can disguise. 

To avoid this and other dangers a counter-suggestion 
from the same symposium has been adopted by an in- 
fluential group of Larrovitch's disciples. This is the es- 
tablishment of the Larrovitch Foundation and Fellow- 
ship, with a controlling body of members selected from 
all parts of the country. These members are to meet at 
regular intervals, and gather at least once a year, prob- 
ably on the master's birthday, at a commemorative 
banquet. The concensus of opinion of thousands of the 
followers of Larrovitch will thus govern the Fellowship 
and so regulate it as to preserve the orthodoxy of its 
teachings. An authoritative focus of Larrovitch's pan- 
tology will thus be created, while a world-wide propa- 
ganda is carried on, as now, by his disciples, the mem- 
bers of the Foundation. To bring America and Russia 
into deeper, closer sympathy will be their easy task. To 
inspire the spirit of Democracy among the people of 
every land, and in a real, personal and vital way, will 
be their mission. To raise in every heart a monument of 
gratitude to one of the greatest intellectual benefactors 
of mankind will be their joy. 

Already the nucleus of a fund for the Larrovitch 
Foundation has been secured; and an effort is being 

[112] 



Toward a farrovitch Foundation 

made to obtain for it the endowment fund recently of- 
fered to support a Larrovitch chair at a university. If 
this can be done — and it is made possible by the high 
regard in which the great leader is held by his generous 
patron — The Larrovitch Foundation will have a secure 
base. The enthusiastic devotion of his followers may be 
trusted to make the edifice constructed thereon a noble, 
worthy and perennial monument that shall immortahze 
the name of Larrovitch and reflect an honor on our- 
selves. With Horace we may truly say: Dignum laude 
virum Musa vetat mori. 

James Howard Bridge 



C113} 



^'. 



==5«. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 

Jl^rrovitch 

^ARTHUR COLTON 



Crasny Baba {The Red Woman] 

Moscow, 1852 

Ivan Soronko 

St. Petersburg, 1859 
Chorny Khleb [Black Bread] 

St. Petersburg, i860 
Propre et Ordonnee [Swept and Garnished] 

Paris, 1864— St. Petersburg, 1865 
Vyvodne [The Right to Marriage] 

St. Petersburg, 1866 
Barin! Barin! [Master! Master!] 

St. Petersburg, 1870 
Dvornik [The Door Keeper] 

St. Petersburg, 1879 
Gospodi Pomi [Lord Have Mercy] 

St. Petersburg, 1881 



[117] 



^ ^ 



"Bibliographical D^tes 

^ARTHUR COLTON 



CjRASny Baba [The Red Woman] is a collection of peasant 
sketches that had appeared in a Siberian paper during 
Larrovitch's term of exile. It takes its name from Baba 
as the peasant woman is known. The word crasny has 
peculiar significance: red is the favorite color of the 
moujik. When he speaks of a thing being beautiful he 
speaks of it as red! This title shows how close to the 
peasant viewpoint Larrovitch came. The first edition 
of "Crasny Baba," issued from the press of C. Letupin 
of Moscow, in 1852, was a slim, small octavo volume 
of 96 pages, bound in yellow paper boards. There were 
no illustrations. The copy preserved in the Alexand- 
roff Museum at Irkutsk lacks the lower half of page 24. 

Ivan Soronko is a novel of the Russian Robin Hood type. 
Published in St. Petersburg in 1859. First edition, 
copies of which are in libraries of the Universities of 
Kiev and Cracow, was an octavo of 398 pages. No 
illustrations. 

Chorny Khleb [Black Bread] is a collection of short stories 
about peasant life that appeared in various St. Peters- 
burg journals after Larrovitch returned from Siberia. 
A. BetenkoflFof St. Petersburg was the publisher. The 
original volume issued in i860, is an octavo in blue 
boards, 324 pages, with crude wood-cut head and tail 
pieces to each story. This ran into two editions and 
helped establish the literary reputation of the author. 

Propre et Ordonnee [Swept and Garnished] a long short 
story issued while Larrovitch was in Paris in 1864, and 
reprinted in a Russian edition by Betenkoff of St. 
Petersburg under the same title a year later. Copies 
of the French edition are fairly common. It was bound 
in yellow paper covers with a sketch of a Russian vil- 
lage street in black. 

Vyvodne [The Right to Marriage] shows a complete 
change from Larrovitch's previous methods of writing 
and topics. It marks the beginning of his spiritual 
growth, and gave promise of the author's future suc- 
cess. It was bound in paper covers, 300 pages with no 
illustrations. The first edidon is dated 1866. It ran 
into four editions and was eventually translated into 
Bulgarian, German and Danish. A pirated edition of 

[121} 



Feodor ^Vladimir JTarrovitch 

a translation from the German is said to have appeared 
in Paris in 1868, but no copies are known to exist. A 
slim volume of three little songs which occurred in 
this novel were brought out in Paris by M. Eberlein. 
It is very rare. 

Barin! Barin [Master! Master!] Another novel appeared 
from the press of Saphna-Novsky in St. Petersburg in 
1870. It was the first of a trilogy. It was in red and 
yellow paper covers, a large volume of 350 pages, with 
a vignette on the title page. This ran into several edi- 
tions, 50,000 copies being sold in one year alone. 
Translations appeared in Polish, Danish, German and 
French. A Yiddish translation is said to have been 
published, but no copies have been found; it was 
doubtless pirated. 

DvoRNiK [The Door Keeper] a novel, the second of the tril- 
ogy, in which the spiritual development of Larro- 
vitch almost approached mysticism, was published by 
BetenkofF in St. Petersburg in 1874. Mr. Betenkoff 
had now become Larrovitch's publisher. It was an 
octavo volume of 400 pages with copper plate vignette 
on the title page and black buckram cover. A cheaper 
edition in paper covers was also issued. Copies of 
these two first editions are not common, but can oc- 
casionally be found. Seven editions in all were pub- 
lished and the book enjoyed French, German, Danish, 
Bulgarian and Italian translations. 

GosPODi PoMi [Lord Have Mercy] was Larrovitch in the 
fullest flower of his spiritual development. In it the 
heights and depths of his religious belief are clearly 
shown. It was the final volume of the trilogy. It was 
published in St. Petersburg in 1881; large octavo, 440 
pages, no illustrations, and yellow paper and brown 
buckram covers. Six editions were issued. Transla- 
tions appeared in France, Germany, Denmark and 
Poland. 



[ 122] 



^K^erences 

-o^GUSTAVE SIMONSON 



Students of Russian literature who desire to ac- 
quaint themselves further with the works of Larrovitch 
will find the following references of interest. The Auth- 
ors Club is indebted to Dr. Gustave Simonson for com- 
piling this list. 

Life, Letters and Literary Labors of Larrovitch.— 

James Trotter. London, 1889. 
Comentarios Sobre Novelas Rusas.— Eduardo Pasco. 

Barcelona, 1890. 
Les Russes dans Paris.— M. Berton. Paris, 1871. 
Le progres de la philosophic.- C. G. Renard. Paris, 

1892. 
Notes sur les Russes.— L. Henriquez. Paris, 1901. 
Les nuits de la Crimee.— A. Thurot. Bordeaux, 1907. 
Revue des productions litteraires du Caucasse.— J. 

T. ChampoUion. Paris, 1883. 
Pourquoi les Russes souffrent-ils?— P. B. Sourain. 

Paris, 1897. 
La Russie sous Alexandre IL— L. F. Robin. Paris, 

1900. 
Les fondements de la Science Slave.— C. A. Bruhl- 

Levy. Paris, 19 13. 
Larrovitch.— V. Mazkenov. Paris, 1899.* 
Les Amours de T. Vladimir Larrovitch.— Ivan Bar- 

tinski. Bris, 1893.! 
L'Histoire Gallante de Teodor Vladimir Larrovitch. 

— Marcel Lanatiere. Paris, 1900. 
Die wahren Freunde der Slawen.— A. Aretz. Munich, 
1896. 

*A French translation— an excellent piece of work, incidentally— of the 

1890 Russian edition published in St. Petersburg. 

tThe original Russian edition of this was published in 1893 in Moscow. 

[125] 



Feodor %Jladimir £arrovitch 

Dostoievsky und seine Zeitgenossen. — V. M. Zeudorf. 
Berlin, 1900. 

Die Entwickelung der realistischen Novelle Russ- 
lands. — G. Bruncher. Berlin, 1913. 

Kiew und seine Sohne. — L. W. Lewezer. Leipsic, 
1882. 

Sibirien und was wir ihn verdanken. — B. Plumacher. 
Heidelberg, 1886. 



TPYAbl /lABPOBMHA. — neiporpaAi., 1914 

/lABPOBMH-b M ErO /IIOBOBHbm nOXOWAEHIfl. C. 

BAPHHOB'L. — neiporpaAi*, 1896 

CPEAHIE rOAbI JIABPOBHH'B. T. K. BJI^HMIPCKm- 

KOO^l). — MocKBa, 1887 

CblHbl KPbliyiA. B. CAHHFB. 

MACTEPt HOBE/lMCT"b POCCIM B. KHABPyHHHT). — 

KieBi, 1890 

/IMTEPATYPA CMBMPM. T. BESABHHL. — neiporpa/i.i,, 

1912 

AYUJEBMbm OB/lMK"b /lABPOBMHA. C. HAJ^POJKt. 

— MocKBa 

BE/lMKm nVTb K"b BOCTOKY. A. PETCOBT). HeTporpaA. 

1905 

/lABP0BMH"b M AOCTOEBCKm. C. PEHHTHHI). — Hei 

porpaA"b, 1913 



[126] 



THIS BOOK WAS DESIGNED BY WILLIAM 
ASPINWALL BRADLEY FOR THE YALE UNI- 
VERSITY PRESS, AND EXECUTED UNDER HIS 
SUPERVISION BY NORMAN T. A. MUNDER 
AND COMPANY, BALTIMORE 



.41 



^ M^i 



